The arabic "bab" appears to apply to any portal so we had an interesting discussion with friends as to why the town walls as well as castles and fields don't have doors but that their gates may have doors in them.
Bab Taghout's renovations are now finished and their huge old doors viewable again after months behind corrugated iron. There are two sets of doors, one closing the central gateway and one closing the access to the gatehouse from the side. They appear very old; I don't know if they've ever been replaced but they look like the original Saadian gates.They are made of wood and one has lost its covering so you can clearly see the making. The others retain there covering ,which appears to be strips of leather held in place by iron bolts but could possibly be sheets of metal; The material is blackened by age and I didn't want to scrape at it to find out.
You can cleary see the massive posts around which they are hinged.
The gatehouse has an area which is covered with what could be bench like seating for sentries and where before the renovation people sat to sell bunches of mint and herbs. They haven't returned presumably because of the clampdown on hawkers which evicted them from their temporary site to the side.
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