El Badi Palace

El Badi Palace was, by the accounts that survive, one of the most extraordinary buildings of its age. Built in the late sixteenth century by the Saadian sultan who commanded it, its central courtyard once held Italian marble columns, gilded ceilings, and five reflecting basins filled from underground channels. The name translates as 'the incomparable'. What remains are the ruins: massive pisé walls that reach fifteen meters in places, a sunken courtyard replanted with orange trees, a labyrinth of underground passages, and the storks that have nested on the parapets for as long as anyone remembers. The scale of what was lost is part of the experience. Walking the perimeter of the main court, with the Atlas Mountains visible above the walls to the south and the city invisible on all other sides, there is something clarifying about ruins this substantial. The material was stripped over centuries and redistributed across Morocco; what remains is the armature, which turns out to be enough. A minbar from the Koutoubia Mosque, too fragile now for its original setting, is kept in a small pavilion on the site. Late afternoon is when El Badi shows best, when the walls turn amber and the storks settle. The underground passages are accessible in places, cut through the foundations of the sixteenth-century building, dark and cool even in summer. Above, the storks on the parapets are year-round residents, and their presence, unhurried and indifferent to the visitors below, contributes to the atmosphere of a place that time has moved through rather than left behind.