Most travelers bound for Morocco's imperial cities head straight to Fez or Marrakech. Meknes sits between them on the train line, and most passengers never get off. This is their mistake. Meknes was the capital of an empire that stretched from modern-day Senegal to the Mediterranean. Its walls, granaries, and gates remain. The city just stopped asking for attention.
The first thing you see is Bab Mansour. It is the largest and most beautiful gate in Morocco, and possibly in all of North Africa. Moulay Ismail, the sultan who built Meknes into an imperial capital in the late 17th century, commissioned it. The gate faces Place el-Hedim, the medina's main square, and its scale is disorienting up close. The marble columns framing the arch were pulled from the Roman ruins at Volubilis, twenty kilometers north. The cedar doors are original, nearly three centuries old, and still swing on their hinges. Above the arch, an inscription reads in part: "I am the most beautiful gate in Morocco. I am like the moon in the sky." This is not humility. It is accuracy.
The gate is free to admire from the square. Walking through it puts you in the medina, which is smaller and more manageable than Fez. You will not get lost for hours here. The souks are functional, not theatrical. Vendors sell olives, spices, and textiles to residents. The prices are lower than in Marrakech because the buyers are locals, not tourists. The medina of Meknes is a UNESCO World Heritage site, grouped with the historic monuments that surround it. The designation is deserved, but the city wears it lightly.
Behind Bab Mansour, a five-minute walk through the medina leads to the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail. This is one of the few active religious sites in Morocco where non-Muslims are permitted to enter. The building is modest from the outside. Inside, the courtyard is tiled in white and green zellij, and the prayer hall contains the tomb of the sultan. Moulay Ismail ruled for fifty-five years, from 1672 to 1727, and his reign was built on two things: an army of black slaves and a construction program that rivaled anything in contemporary Europe. He is said to have fathered over five hundred children. The exact number is disputed, but the scale of his ambition is not.
A fifteen-minute walk southeast of the mausoleum brings you to the Heri es-Souani, the royal granaries and stables. This is the most impressive engineering site in Meknes, and one of the least visited. Moulay Ismail built enormous underground grain stores here, kept cool by thick walls and a system of ventilation channels. The stables next door could house twelve thousand horses. The scale is difficult to photograph. You stand in vaulted chambers that extend farther than the light reaches, and you understand that this was a man preparing for siege, for drought, for the long duration of empire. The site is partially ruined but structurally intact. Admission is inexpensive, and there are rarely crowds. You can walk through the granaries in silence.
South of the medina, the Dar Jamai Museum occupies a 19th-century palace built by a family of Moroccan diplomats. The architecture is Andalusian in style, with a central courtyard, carved stucco, and a tiled fountain. The collection includes traditional ceramics, jewelry, textiles, and weapons from the Meknes region. The garden behind the palace is the real attraction. It is shaded by orange trees and lined with bougainvillea, and it looks out over the medina walls. The museum is small. You will spend forty minutes inside and twenty in the garden. That is the right ratio.
Meknes makes sense as a base, not just a destination. Two sites near the city explain why this region mattered long before Moulay Ismail. Volubilis, twenty kilometers north, is the best-preserved Roman site in Morocco. The city was a provincial capital of Mauretania Tingitana, and the mosaics in its villas are still in place. The House of the Athlete, the House of the Knight, and the House of Venus all contain floor mosaics depicting hunting scenes, marine life, and mythological figures. The Triumphal Arch of Caracalla stands at the end of the Decumanus Maximus. The site is open to the sky, with little shade, and the summer heat is serious. Go early in the morning or late afternoon. A grand taxi from Meknes costs around twenty dirhams per seat, or you can hire a taxi privately for a half-day. The drive takes thirty minutes.
Five kilometers beyond Volubilis is Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, the town where Idriss I, the founder of Morocco's first Islamic dynasty, is buried. The town is built onto a hillside, with white-washed houses stacked above each other and green-tiled roofs marking the shrine. Non-Muslims cannot enter the mausoleum itself, but you can walk through the town and climb to the viewpoint above it. The layout is organic and steep. From the top, you look down on a town that has been a site of pilgrimage for twelve centuries. It feels older than the Roman ruins nearby, and in a way it is.
The food in Meknes is northern Moroccan, with stronger Berber and Mediterranean influences than the food of the south. The region is known for olives, and the olive oil from the Fès-Meknes region accounts for a significant share of Moroccan production. In the medina, try the market near Place el-Hedim for olives, preserved lemons, and harissa. The local bread, khobz, is baked in communal ovens and sold warm in the morning. For a sit-down meal, the area around the medina has several restaurants serving tagines and pastilla. The pastilla in Meknes tends toward the savory, with pigeon or chicken, almonds, and cinnamon, unlike the sweeter seafood versions found on the coast. Prices are reasonable. A full tagine meal with bread and mint tea costs what you would pay for a sandwich in Marrakech.
Getting to Meknes is straightforward. The ONCF train from Fez takes roughly fifty minutes on the express line. From Rabat, it is about two hours. From Casablanca, three. The train station is outside the old city, and a petit taxi to the medina costs between ten and fifteen dirhams. There is no meter culture in Meknes taxis, so agree on the price before getting in. The city is compact enough to walk. From the train station to Bab Mansour is twenty-five minutes on foot if you prefer to skip the taxi.
For accommodation, the medina has several riads converted into guesthouses. These are smaller and less designed for Instagram than their counterparts in Marrakech. The rooms are simpler, the courtyards are quieter, and the owners are more likely to be present and conversational. A room in a medina riad costs roughly what you would pay for a budget hotel in Fez. Outside the medina, the modern city has standard hotels near the train station and the Ville Nouvelle. They are functional but uninspiring. Stay in the medina if you can.
What to skip: the day-trip mentality. Meknes suffers from being an hour from Fez. Tour buses arrive in the morning, walk through Bab Mansour, glance at the square, and leave by lunch. This misses the point. The city opens up when you have time to walk the granaries without a schedule, to eat lunch in a local restaurant where no one speaks English, and to watch Place el-Hedim fill with families in the evening. Stay one night, minimum. Two is better.
Also skip the attempt to see Volubilis, Moulay Idriss, and Meknes in a single day. Volubilis deserves three hours. Moulay Idriss deserves two. Rushing turns both into photo stops. If you are short on time, drop Moulay Idriss and give Volubilis the morning it needs.
Meknes is not Morocco's most beautiful city. It is not its most exciting. But it is the most honest. The monuments are real, the history is bloody and well-documented, and the city has not yet learned to perform. That combination is rare. If you are the kind of traveler who prefers a gate that speaks for itself over a medina that has been curated for visitors, Meknes is where you should be.
Get there by morning train from Fez. Walk through Bab Mansour without stopping for the tour guides at the gate. Head straight for the Heri es-Souani, which most visitors skip. Stand in the grain vaults and listen to the silence. That is the sound of an empire that stored against the future, and the future came anyway.
By Amara Okafor
Nigerian-British wellness practitioner and cultural historian. Amara specializes in traditional healing practices and spiritual tourism. Certified yoga instructor and Ayurvedic consultant who writes about finding inner peace through cultural immersion.