- When to go
- September 22° · 2 rainy days
- Per day
- €€price 2 of 5
- How many days
- 1days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 9 km Rabat · 100 km Casablanca
- Right now
Rabat is the administrative capital and you feel it at once: the medina is orderly, prices are fixed, and nobody runs after you. Anyone who came out of Marrakesh or Fez exhausted sees here what a Moroccan city looks like when it does not live off tourists.
The Kasbah of the Udayas is a twelfth-century fortified quarter on the headland above the Bou Regreg estuary, its houses painted white and blue — the colours were added in the twentieth century, when Andalusian refugees lived here. You enter through a monumental gate of 1195, wander for twenty minutes and come out onto a garden and a terrace above the ocean.
The Hassan Tower is an unfinished minaret from 1195: the sultan wanted the largest mosque in the world, died before it was done, and building stopped at 44 metres of the planned sixty. What stands around it are the columns of a mosque the 1755 earthquake brought down. Opposite is the mausoleum of Mohammed V, free to enter and open to non-Muslims.
Chellah is the Roman town of Sala Colonia, over which the Marinids built a necropolis in the fourteenth century, and then everything grew over — today it is a wall, ruins, storks nesting on the minaret and a garden. Twenty minutes' walk from the centre, and the quietest thing Morocco offers.
What to see in Rabat
The Kasbah of the Udayas
A twelfth-century fortified quarter painted white and blue. The 1195 gate and a terrace over the ocean.
The Hassan Tower
An unfinished minaret from 1195 and the field of columns from a mosque felled by the 1755 earthquake.
The Mausoleum of Mohammed V
Opposite the tower, free and open to everyone. The guards in white are part of the scene.
Chellah
A Roman town beneath a Marinid necropolis, with storks nesting on the minaret. The quietest place in urban Morocco.
The medina
Orderly, fixed prices, no calling out. This is where you buy what you did not dare to in Marrakesh.
The beach and the estuary
The Bou Regreg divides Rabat from Salé; rowing boats cross for a few dirhams — the cheapest excursion in the country.
Two things you probably did not know
The Hassan Tower was meant to be the minaret of the largest mosque in the world. Work stopped in 1199 when the sultan died, leaving a 44-metre tower and a field of over two hundred columns with no roof.
Rabat has been Morocco's capital since 1912, when the French chose it over Fes. Until then the country had four imperial cities that took turns as capital, depending on which dynasty ruled.
Ready for Rabat?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Rabat — day trips or weekends.
Morocco
→The north by train, the south by road, and in July you leave Marrakech for the coast
Portugal
→A country that spent centuries looking at the ocean instead of the Europe behind it
Turkey
→Istanbul, then one direction: Cappadocia by plane, Ephesus and Pamukkale by train, or the Lycian coast by bus
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Casablanca, Fez and Chefchaouen
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin Rabat if you have been.
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