The Four Imperial
Capitals of Morocco

Intellectual, deeply spiritual, and steeped in artisan heritage, Fes is a city where medieval scholarship and traditional craft survive not as museum curiosities but as living practice.

Fes el-Bali, the old walled city, is widely recognized as the most intact medieval medina in the Arab world. Its tangled network of over nine thousand narrow streets and dead-ends is home to mosques, madrasas, fondouks, and workshops that have changed remarkably little since the Middle Ages. The city was the intellectual and cultural center of Morocco for centuries, and it retains that gravity today -- a place where the call to prayer echoes off ancient walls and the scent of cedar shavings and leather dye fills the air.

Modern, cultured, and quietly confident, Rabat is the administrative heart of the kingdom -- a capital that balances medieval monuments with tree-lined boulevards, world-class museums, and an increasingly vibrant arts scene.

Rabat became the permanent capital of Morocco under the French Protectorate and remains the seat of the king and the national government. Yet its history stretches far deeper than the 20th century. The Almohad rulers built the great Hassan Tower here in the 12th century, and the Merinid necropolis of Chellah stands on a site that was inhabited by Phoenicians, Romans, and Berbers long before Islam reached North Africa. Today the city offers a more measured, less frenetic alternative to Marrakech or Fes -- wide avenues, a superb modern art museum, a breezy ocean-facing kasbah, and a medina that rewards unhurried exploration.