Morocco, Top Travel Tips – The Historical Sites

I continue with my short series of Top Travel Tips for Morocco and today I recommend the historical sites and specifically the Roman City of Volubilis.

Taking a day trip out of the city of Fez and after a long drive we eventually saw signs for the excavations of Volubilis and our guide for the day, Abdul, left the highway and followed a dusty pot-holed track towards the Roman City.

I am not sure what I was really expecting but this took me by surprise rather like the moment we came across the Roman ruins of Segobriga in Spain in 2009 for even from the road it was clear that this place was much bigger than I was expecting.

At the entrance to the site we paid the reasonable entry fee and then negotiated with a local guide who offered to give us a guided tour and a history of the city and when we were all satisfied with the price we set off along a dusty path towards the excavations and Hamid began his commentary

Volubilis was the Roman capital of the Province of Mauritania and was founded in the third century B.C., it became an important outpost of the Roman Empire and was graced with many fine buildings.  Extensive remains of these survive in the archaeological site, located in the middle of this fertile agricultural area.  The city continued to be occupied long after the Romans had gone and at some point converted to Islam and Volubilis was later briefly to become the capital of Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty, who is buried at nearby Moulay Idris.

It is now of course a UNESCO World Heritage Site, admitted to the list in 1997.

Volubilis was an important and versatile place, a garrison town which protected the far south western boundary of the Empire, an agricultural bread basket producing important crops like wheat and olives in the fertile valley to be transported across the Empire via Tangier to the North next to the Mediterranean Sea and a city of rich noblemen who built themselves fine villas and a beautiful city in an enviable location.

Much better I imagine to be posted here than to the northern extremes of the Empire at Hadrian’s Wall.

Volubilis, it turns out, is the most important ancient archaeological site in Morocco and Hassan took us into the old streets running north to south and through the foundations and walls of the houses that flanked them.  In many of them there were fine mosaics and I thought it a little surprising to find them here exposed to the elements and not having been removed to a museum nearby.

The houses were huge and with a bit of imagination it was almost possible to imagine what this place may have been like two thousand years ago.  It was interesting to walk around the old streets, wander through the corridors of the houses, along the main street of shops and imagine that in this very place there were soldiers marching, classic plays being performed in the theatre, emperor worshippers in the temples, magistrates swaggering around importantly in togas, and slaves to do all of the dirty work.

After walking along the main street lined by the remains of grand columns and arches we arrived at the centre piece of the city, the triumphal arch which has been carefully pieced back together by French archaeologists nearly a hundred years ago.  Next to the arch was the Forum, the centre of political life in the city and adjacent to that the ancient Basilica where the citizens came to worship their gods.

Hamid concluded the tour with an explanation of Roman life in this area and tried to speculate why the Romans suddenly abandoned Morocco but like many historians who have wrestled with this question before him could provide no answers.

He walked us back to the car park where Abdul was waiting and we paid the agreed fee and added a tip to thank him for an excellent tour.

Read this wonderful interpretation of what might have happened at Volubilis at Nareszcie Urlop.