About This Tour
Rabat is Morocco's most sophisticated and most underrated city. The royal capital where 800-year-old history layers on French colonial elegance on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean — and where almost no international tour groups go.
The Hassan Tower has stood unfinished for 800 years — begun in 1195 as the world's largest mosque, abandoned at the death of Sultan Yacoub al-Mansour, leaving 200 columns standing in the open air for eight centuries. One of the most atmospheric sites in North Africa.
The Kasbah des Oudaias sits on a bluff above the meeting of the Bou Regreg river and the Atlantic, its Andalusian gardens the most beautiful in Morocco. The Chellah — Roman and medieval ruins in the same site, storks nesting on the medieval towers — is extraordinary. The Mausoleum of Mohammed V: modern Moroccan architecture at its finest.
Rabat has a sophistication that comes from being a working capital: real restaurants, real culture, real daily life — without the tourist infrastructure that has softened the edges off Marrakech.