MEDIA ROULETTE
When in Rome, in Morocco
By David Cogswell
Sometimes it feels like no matter where I go I end up in Rome. In Spain, France, Jordan, Israel, even in Britain, I have found myself staring in wonder at Roman ruins, as if stuck in a cycle of eternal recurrence. Each one seems to reveal more fascinating details about that amazing lost world, and once again Rome lives. When I recently traveled to Morocco with IsramWorld, the glory that was Rome was not foremost in my mind. But on my second day in Morocco I found myself in one of the most impressive Roman ruins I have seen.
We arrived in Morocco on Sunday, took a quick tour of Casablanca, then drove to Rabat and went on an afternoon sightseeing jaunt around the city. Rabat, the capital of Morocco, is called “the garden city,” and the name is apt, because its plant life is prodigious. Plant species have been brought from all over the world, and practically everything grows well in Morocco. The landscape is constantly presenting you with brightly colored flowers and blossoms, such as the violet Jacaranda trees from Brazil and the Bird of Paradise trees from South Africa, so named for the tree’s extravagant yellow flower, shaped like a bird in flight. Moroccan residents remarked on the mildness of the summer, and indeed the weather seemed to stay within the ideal range for human comfort and pleasure until we reached Marrakech, where summer started to get serious.
Rabat, with Fes, Meknes and Marrakech, is one of the four Imperial Cities of Morocco, and the present-day capital city. In Rabat we saw the Royal Palace, the second largest royal palace in the country, after the one in Fes. Not being guests of the king, we stayed outside and viewed the huge walled compound of the royal family with its ornate, monumental entry arch. We saw the Hassan Tower, the minaret incomplete mosque begun in 1194, intended at the time to be the world’s largest minaret. We also went to the mausoleum of Mohammed V, the grandfather of Morocco’s present-day King Mohammed VI. It was an ornate, massive white stone structure, combining great magnitude with minutely detailed Moorish designs carved into its stone surfaces. It was not the Taj Mahal, but is worthy of the comparison.
We set out the next morning for Fes on a route punctuated with stops along the way. We drove through a rich agricultural region, past fields of olives, grapes, grains and vegetables to Meknes. We stopped at the Holy City of Moulay Idriss, a pretty white city on a hillside where we visited the tomb of the founder of Islam, Moulay Idriss el Akhbar (the Great), the great grandson of the prophet Mohammed.
But of all of our travels that day, what stuck with me most was Volubilis, the Roman ruin between the cities of Meknes and Fes on our itinerary. I was not really prepared for Volubilis. The brief itinerary outline we had been given mentioned a visit to the Chellah Ruins, but I didn’t know what they were. It was one of the more striking experiences of the trip, though it was far out of context of most of what we were seeing. It had no Moorish designs, no Islamic influences. It came long before all that, and while we walking through the ghostly ruins, it felt as if time had stood still since the period from 25 B.C. to 285 A.D. when the city thrived.
You can still walk the floors of the homes and see elaborate pictorial mosaics inlaid into them. You can see the crumbling walls and the rooms and visualize how the city’s inhabitants conducted their affairs. The foundations, floors, room plans, streets, walkways and avenues are still clearly visible, though the roofs were knocked down in the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, which was on the same fault line as Volubilis. But in spite of the earthquake, 50-foot pillars still tower over you as you walk through the ruins, some of them now are appropriated by storks that have used the tops as platforms on which to build nests, which they sublet to sparrows, who inhabit the grass and straw that hangs down below the capitals. Many of the stone walls still stand, including the giant walls of a temple.
Our guide talked about the life in Volubilis with such imaginative vividness and detail that I was lulled into a state in which felt as if I were an inhabitant of the city myself, and Roman life in all its delicious sophistication and decadence was still teeming noisily around me. The city was built on a standard Roman city plan, with its main street, Appian Way, its own Arch of Triumph, its temple, plumbing, baths, brothels and marketplace.
Its population was 20,000 during its heyday, 5,000 Romans and 15,000 Berbers. The Romans enslaved the Berbers to build the city, and formed the aristocracy of the community, while the Berbers made up the bulk of the population. The Romans probably picked the site for their city because of its affinity with Italy. The landscape resembles that of Tuscany and its tall pines and gentle hills are reminiscent of the city of Rome itself. Our group wandered around the ruins, looked at various buildings, surveyed the hilly landscape, paused to pose for photos in various places, then walked away and back to the van.
When Leslie Warren, our tour guide, asked us at the end of the day what had been most memorable about the day, I had to say Volubilis. It was refreshingly out of context of the rest of the trip, and had that extra punch of the unexpected. And when I was there, for a while I felt as if I had lived there during the glory days of Rome when it was in Morocco. When in Rome, in Morocco By David Cogswell
Sometimes it feels like no matter where I go I end up in Rome. In Spain, France, Jordan, Israel, even in Britain, I have found myself staring in wonder at Roman ruins, as if stuck in a cycle of eternal recurrence. Each one seems to reveal more fascinating details about that amazing lost world, and once again Rome lives. When I recently traveled to Morocco with IsramWorld, the glory that was Rome was not foremost in my mind. But on my second day in Morocco I found myself in one of the most impressive Roman ruins I have seen.
We arrived in Morocco on Sunday, took a quick tour of Casablanca, then drove to Rabat and went on an afternoon sightseeing jaunt around the city. Rabat, the capital of Morocco, is called “the garden city,” and the name is apt, because its plant life is prodigious. Plant species have been brought from all over the world, and practically everything grows well in Morocco. The landscape is constantly presenting you with brightly colored flowers and blossoms, such as the violet Jacaranda trees from Brazil and the Bird of Paradise trees from South Africa, so named for the tree’s extravagant yellow flower, shaped like a bird in flight. Moroccan residents remarked on the mildness of the summer, and indeed the weather seemed to stay within the ideal range for human comfort and pleasure until we reached Marrakech, where summer started to get serious.
Rabat, with Fes, Meknes and Marrakech, is one of the four Imperial Cities of Morocco, and the present-day capital city. In Rabat we saw the Royal Palace, the second largest royal palace in the country, after the one in Fes. Not being guests of the king, we stayed outside and viewed the huge walled compound of the royal family with its ornate, monumental entry arch. We saw the Hassan Tower, the minaret incomplete mosque begun in 1194, intended at the time to be the world’s largest minaret. We also went to the mausoleum of Mohammed V, the grandfather of Morocco’s present-day King Mohammed VI. It was an ornate, massive white stone structure, combining great magnitude with minutely detailed Moorish designs carved into its stone surfaces. It was not the Taj Mahal, but is worthy of the comparison.
We set out the next morning for Fes on a route punctuated with stops along the way. We drove through a rich agricultural region, past fields of olives, grapes, grains and vegetables to Meknes. We stopped at the Holy City of Moulay Idriss, a pretty white city on a hillside where we visited the tomb of the founder of Islam, Moulay Idriss el Akhbar (the Great), the great grandson of the prophet Mohammed.
But of all of our travels that day, what stuck with me most was Volubilis, the Roman ruin between the cities of Meknes and Fes on our itinerary. I was not really prepared for Volubilis. The brief itinerary outline we had been given mentioned a visit to the Chellah Ruins, but I didn’t know what they were. It was one of the more striking experiences of the trip, though it was far out of context of most of what we were seeing. It had no Moorish designs, no Islamic influences. It came long before all that, and while we walking through the ghostly ruins, it felt as if time had stood still since the period from 25 B.C. to 285 A.D. when the city thrived.
You can still walk the floors of the homes and see elaborate pictorial mosaics inlaid into them. You can see the crumbling walls and the rooms and visualize how the city’s inhabitants conducted their affairs. The foundations, floors, room plans, streets, walkways and avenues are still clearly visible, though the roofs were knocked down in the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, which was on the same fault line as Volubilis. But in spite of the earthquake, 50-foot pillars still tower over you as you walk through the ruins, some of them now are appropriated by storks that have used the tops as platforms on which to build nests, which they sublet to sparrows, who inhabit the grass and straw that hangs down below the capitals. Many of the stone walls still stand, including the giant walls of a temple.
Our guide talked about the life in Volubilis with such imaginative vividness and detail that I was lulled into a state in which felt as if I were an inhabitant of the city myself, and Roman life in all its delicious sophistication and decadence was still teeming noisily around me. The city was built on a standard Roman city plan, with its main street, Appian Way, its own Arch of Triumph, its temple, plumbing, baths, brothels and marketplace.
Its population was 20,000 during its heyday, 5,000 Romans and 15,000 Berbers. The Romans enslaved the Berbers to build the city, and formed the aristocracy of the community, while the Berbers made up the bulk of the population. The Romans probably picked the site for their city because of its affinity with Italy. The landscape resembles that of Tuscany and its tall pines and gentle hills are reminiscent of the city of Rome itself. Our group wandered around the ruins, looked at various buildings, surveyed the hilly landscape, paused to pose for photos in various places, then walked away and back to the van.
When Leslie Warren, our tour guide, asked us at the end of the day what had been most memorable about the day, I had to say Volubilis. It was refreshingly out of context of the rest of the trip, and had that extra punch of the unexpected. And when I was there, for a while I felt as if I had lived there during the glory days of Rome when it was in Morocco. -- David Cogswell