Travel guide: Meknes, Morocco (MEK)

Meknes sits quietly among Morocco's four imperial cities while Marrakech and Fes claim most of the attention, yet it was built up as an imperial capital under Sultan Moulay Ismail in the late seventeenth century, and that history still shows in the scale of its monuments: Bab Mansour, the sultan's grand gate into the old royal city, ranks among the most striking examples of Moroccan gate architecture anywhere in the country, its green-tiled arch and carved brasswork still drawing visitors into the adjoining Place el-Hedim. The walled medina behind it is a genuine UNESCO World Heritage site in its own right, with narrow lanes, souks and the Moulay Ismail mausoleum open to visitors as one of the few royal tombs in Morocco that non-Muslims can enter. A short drive north of the city, Volubilis adds a second, entirely different layer of history: a well-preserved Roman provincial town with intact mosaic floors, standing columns and a triumphal arch, set in open farmland that makes the ruins feel remarkably uncrowded compared with better-known Roman sites. Meknes has no airport of its own with reliable scheduled service, so most travelers fly into Fes-Saiss Airport and continue the roughly hour-long drive west, a route shared by tour buses, grand taxis and the intercity trains that also connect the two cities. Within Meknes, the medina and imperial city core are walkable, while a grand taxi or organized tour is the practical way to reach Volubilis and the nearby holy town of Moulay Idriss. Seasonally, spring and autumn bring the most comfortable temperatures for walking the medina and the open Volubilis site, while summer heat in this inland plain can be intense by midday, and winter turns cool and occasionally rainy but rarely severe. Meknes rewards travelers willing to skip a night in Fes for a quieter, still-genuine dose of imperial Morocco.