Saadian Tombs

The Saadian Tombs were sealed by the Alaouite dynasty in the seventeenth century and remained unknown to the outside world until French aerial photography revealed them in 1917. They were not destroyed, only walled off, a decision whose effect was to preserve what is now one of the finest concentrations of Saadian architectural detail anywhere in Morocco. Three chambers contain the remains of roughly sixty members of the royal family, with the soldiers and servants buried in the garden outside. The central chamber, designed for the sultan's own burial, is the one that concentrates the most elaborate craft: a ceiling of carved cedar organized in concentric registers of decreasing scale, stalactite pendentives of plaster, walls of carved marble and zellige tilework in patterns that take time to read. The light inside is filtered and dim, which is the right condition for seeing carved surfaces at this density. The middle chamber holds the twelve columns of Italian marble that the Saadians imported; the outer hall, slightly simpler, accommodates the burials of the sultan's descendants. The tombs draw crowds, particularly in the late morning. The experience of the carved surfaces is better with fewer people in the room. The garden burials outside the three main chambers are marked by simpler stones and less elaborate planting, a spatial hierarchy that extends the political logic of the complex even into death.