Although Meknes has one overwhelmingly wonderful gate the rest of the 17C Imperial City is pretty wonderful too although the Royal Palace is still kept as such and not visitable. Moulay Ismael's tomb is closed on Friday mornings and due to our car problems that's the day we were there so we only saw the outside.
We had a good wander round past the gardens beyond Bab Mansour and into the old town.This was a bit of a maze and we had toget directions to get out but the covered alleys providing shade were welcome on a hot day and would have been even more so in a thunderstorm. Meanwhile there were a number of smaller attractive gates into the Imperial city and the medina and we finished off with cold drinks in the square.
There were some disregarded Art Deco "modern" shops I was quite taken with and we went up to by the new palace to view the panorama of the old city.
Bab Mansour the spectacular entrance to Moulay Ismail's new city is named for it's architect, El Mansour a christian convert. It is extremely well preserved and is a good opportunity to imagine the grandeur of Ismail's Meknes.
The city dates to the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th. Louis Quatorze was building Versailles at the time and Ismael's programme was a deliberate attempt to out-build and out-dazzle that palace. The British equivalent was Blennheim being built by John Churchill but as a mere General he was never going to trump a King and a Sultan.
Bab Mansour was actually finished by El Mansour's son, Moulay Abdallah and the story is, although probably not strictly true, that Ismail on inspecting and admiring the work asked Mansour whther he could build an even better one. When he answered yes Ismail had him beheaded on the spot.
The columns were brought from Volubilis and set into an adaptation of Almohad design withn black and white zellij decoration.
