Want to discover Meknes? There are a thousand and one ways to experience it. Meknes is a quiet, flourishing and modern city, one of the most powerful cities in the kingdom, telling you the most fascinating stories of Morocco.
It was an impressive city of Hispano-Moorish style surrounded by high walls pierced by monumental gates that shows today the harmonious alliance of Islamic and European styles in the Maghreb of the 17th century.
Meknes is a city in northeastern Morocco founded in 711 by the Meknassa tribe, from which its name originates, 130 kilometers from the capital Rabat, it is one of the four imperial cities of Morocco and the third largest city in the kingdom with a population of 519 296 inhabitants.
The historical heritage of Meknes has been recognized as such since the beginning of the 20th century and is among the monuments, sites and areas classified as “national heritage” in Morocco.
Still today, protected by some forty kilometers of defensive walls and 15 m high, pierced by nine monumental gates, it has preserved imposing key monuments, including twenty-five mosques that earned it the nickname of “city of a hundred minarets”.
Among them, the Great Mosque, probably founded in the twelfth century, is remarkable for its doors with beautiful carved awnings, ten hammams, palaces, vast granaries, remains of fondouks (hotels for merchants) and private homes, testifying to the Almoravid, Merinid and Alawite periods.
Its medina and the remains of the royal palace have earned Meknes a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The city is still prosperous, benefiting from the crops of the rich Saïs plain (cereals, olive trees and vines).
It is considered an exemplary witness of the fortified cities of the Maghreb.
It is a remarkably complete representation of the urban and architectural structure of a 17th-century North African capital, harmoniously combining elements of Islamic and European design and planning.
