Rabat

A place with its own rhythm.

Rabat is the capital, and it feels like one: wide boulevards, embassies behind hedges, a calm that the other imperial cities gave up long ago. It is also, since 2012, a UNESCO World Heritage site — a rare case of a city listed for the way its modern and historic halves sit together. The Kasbah of the Udayas is the oldest part, a fortified quarter above the mouth of the Bou Regreg where the lanes are washed blue and white and end suddenly at the Atlantic. Below it, the Chellah is stranger still: a walled Roman town, then a Merinid necropolis, now half garden and half ruin, with storks nesting on the minaret. The Hassan Tower was meant to crown the largest mosque in the world. Work stopped in 1199 when the sultan died, leaving a half-built minaret and a field of 348 columns that never carried a roof — one of the most quietly moving places in the country. Rabat is an easy city to walk, and a good one to breathe in between Fez and the coast.