El Badi Palace

Start with the ground under your feet. It is dusty, warm, and the colour of baked clay. Around you rise long walls of the same ochre earth, cracked and pitted, taller than any house nearby. High on their tops sit great untidy nests of sticks. Listen for a dry clattering sound, like wooden spoons knocking together. That is a stork, snapping its beak. You are standing inside the ruins of El Badi Palace, in the old heart of Marrakech.

The name El Badi is usually translated as 'the incomparable' or 'the marvellous'. It is a word linked to one of the names of God in Arabic tradition. That tells you something about the ambition behind this place. It was never meant to be a modest royal home. It was built to announce power, to impress foreign ambassadors, and to show that Marrakech belonged among the great capitals of its age.

The man behind it was Ahmad al-Mansur, a sultan of the Saadian dynasty. The Saadians were a ruling family from southern Morocco who controlled the country through much of the sixteenth century. Al-Mansur came to the throne in 1578, right after a famous battle against an invading Portuguese army. Europeans often call it the Battle of the Three Kings, because three monarchs died in or around it. Morocco won decisively.

That victory gave al-Mansur two things. The first was prestige across the Mediterranean world. The second was money. Many Portuguese nobles were taken prisoner, and their families paid large ransoms to bring them home. Historians generally link part of the palace's funding to that wealth. Later, Moroccan expeditions south across the Sahara brought more gold into the treasury, which earned the sultan the nickname 'the golden one'. Construction ran for many years, roughly a quarter of a century by most accounts.

Now try to picture what once filled these empty walls. Contemporary descriptions speak of marble columns, carved and painted cedar ceilings, coloured tilework, and gilded decoration. Craftsmen and materials came from far away. A popular story says the sultan paid for Italian marble with Moroccan sugar, pound for pound. Treat that one as a good tale rather than a recorded fact. But Morocco really did export sugar in this period, and the marble really did come from abroad.

Look at the centre of the courtyard. You will see a long rectangular pool, and beside it, gardens sunk below the level of the walkways. This is a classic design in Islamic palace architecture. Water sits at the heart of the space, and planted beds lie lower so that you look down onto the treetops. Today you will find orange trees there. Imagine the reflections of white marble pavilions on the water, and the cool air rising from it on a summer afternoon.

Here is a detail that surprises many visitors. The palace stood in its full glory for only about a century. In the late seventeenth century, a new dynasty ruled Morocco. The Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail moved his capital to the city of Meknes. He ordered El Badi to be stripped. Marble, wood, tiles, and fittings were carried away to decorate his own building projects. The work of dismantling reportedly took years. What you see now is what was left behind.

So why did the walls survive? Because they were too humble to steal. They are built of rammed earth, a mixture of clay, gravel, and lime packed tightly between wooden boards. Look closely and you can still see rows of small square holes running along the surfaces. Those are the marks of the timber beams that held the frames in place during construction. The precious materials left. The earth stayed.

And the storks moved in. They are now part of the identity of this place. In spring you may see chicks standing in the nests, and parents flying in and out over the medina. Many people in Morocco regard storks with affection and respect, and they are rarely disturbed. Notice how the birds use the highest corners of the walls, exactly where a sultan's guards might once have watched the city.

One of the most important treasures in Marrakech is kept inside these grounds, and many visitors walk straight past it. It is the minbar from the Koutoubia Mosque. A minbar is the stepped pulpit from which a sermon is given at Friday prayers. This one was made in Córdoba, in Muslim Spain, during the twelfth century. Its wooden panels are covered in intricate inlay and carving. It is displayed in its own room, and it may require a separate ticket.

Before you leave, find the stairs up to the terrace on the walls. From up there, the layout of the palace becomes clear. You can see the great courtyard as one whole design. Beyond it lies the flat-roofed medina, with satellite dishes, laundry lines, and the green tiled tops of mosques. Look for the tall square minaret of the Koutoubia. On a clear day, the snowy peaks of the Atlas Mountains appear on the horizon.

The palace also sits in an interesting neighbourhood. Close by is the Mellah, the historic Jewish quarter of Marrakech. Nearby, too, is a small square where metalworkers hammer out lanterns, and the sound of their tools carries through the streets. A short walk away are the Saadian Tombs, the burial place built by the same dynasty and associated with the same sultan. Together they give you two very different sides of Saadian power.

If you have time, step down into the underground passages beneath parts of the palace. These dim corridors were once used for storage and, according to some accounts, as cells. The temperature drops as you go down, and the noise of the city disappears. It is a quiet contrast to the bright, open courtyard above, and a reminder that this complex was a working royal site, not only a showpiece.

Now stand still for a moment in the courtyard. Feel the heat coming back off the earthen walls. Listen again for the storks, and for the faint noise of the medina beyond. A sultan built this place to be incomparable, and another sultan took it apart. What remains is space, light, water, and clay. As you walk out through the gate, look back once at the walls... and notice how much of the story they still hold.