Ryad Marakech

The Royal Palace and El Badi Palace

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West of the Saadian Tombs is the complex of the Royal Palace, which lies north and the remains of El Badi Palace. The El Badi Palace is not nothing but ruins remain, however, give an idea of the grandeur of the palace courtyards with 130 m long (and almost as wide) and a pool of about 90 m, once richly decorated in zellige of which Only traces remain.

Built more than 25 years, it lasted only a century, before being completely stripped of its riches by SultanoAlawita Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif. Today is also one of the “favorite” by storks nest in Marrakech.

Behind the Royal Palace lies the Mellah, the ancient Jewish quarter dating back to 1558. This district in the sixteenth century was literally a city within a city, with souks, gardens esinagoghe. Nowadays it is populated almost exclusively by Muslims, since most of the Jews who moved to Casablanca, in France or in Israel. Miâara evocative Jewish cemetery, with its expanse of white rectangular tombs, some of which are very ancient. Arranged without a real order, some are topped with tombstones engraved with name and date of birth and death.

Text credit: Wikipedia
Photo credit: By Keirn OConnor from New York City, United States [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons