The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Morocco
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in Morocco are Koutoubia Mosque, Hassan II Mosque and Mausoleum of Mohammed V. The list covers 6 sacred places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Morocco's sacred architecture grew from more than a thousand years of Islamic dynasties that each left their mark on its cities. The Almohads built monumental mosques with austere, perfectly proportioned minarets; the Marinids filled Fez with richly decorated madrasas; the Saadians and Alaouites added royal tombs. Through all of them run the same crafts: zellige mosaic of cut glazed tile, carved stucco as fine as lace and screens and ceilings of carved cedar.
The Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakesh, completed under the Almohads in the twelfth century, has a square minaret of about 77 metres that served as a model for the Giralda in Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat. In Fez, the Bou Inania Madrasa, built in the 1350s by the Marinid sultan Abu Inan Faris, also served as a congregational mosque, and its courtyard is one of the finest displays of Marinid decoration. The smaller Al-Attarine Madrasa nearby, finished in the 1320s next to the old spice market, packs tile, stucco and cedar into an intimate courtyard.
The royal tombs complete the picture. The Saadian Tombs in Marrakesh, built under Ahmad al-Mansur in the late sixteenth century, were walled off for generations and only rediscovered in 1917, their Hall of Twelve Columns still intact. In Rabat, the Mausoleum of Mohammed V faces the unfinished Hassan Tower. In Casablanca, the Hassan II Mosque, completed in 1993, stands partly over the Atlantic, with a minaret of 210 metres.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Koutoubia Mosque | Mosque | ✓ |
| 2 | Hassan II Mosque | Mosque | |
| 3 | Mausoleum of Mohammed V | Mausoleum | |
| 4 | Bou Inania Madrasa, Fez | Mosque | |
| 5 | Al-Attarine Madrasa | Mosque | |
| 6 | Saadian Tombs | Mausoleum |
01 Koutoubia Mosque
Morocco · 1.2 km from Marrakesh31.624° N 7.994° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay The mosque was founded in 1147 by the Almohad caliph Abd al-Mu'min, just after he took the city from the Almoravids. A first mosque was finished around 1157, and almost immediately a second, larger one was built beside it ; both are oriented well away from the true direction of Mecca.
Did you know? The green and white tiles near the top of the minaret are considered the earliest reliably dated zellij tilework in Morocco.
02 Hassan II Mosque
Morocco · 1.5 km from Casablanca33.607° N 7.633° W
Image by postcardtrip from Pixabay French architect Michel Pinseau designed it, and the construction firm Bouygues built it in seven years, breaking ground in July 1986 and finishing for an inauguration on 30 August 1993 — a tight schedule for a project this scale, driven partly by the king's wish to see it completed in his lifetime.
Did you know? Almost every material came from Morocco: cedar from the Middle Atlas, marble from Agadir and granite from Tafraoute, with Italian white granite columns and Murano glass chandeliers the main exceptions.
03 Mausoleum of Mohammed V
Morocco · 1.4 km from Rabat34.023° N 6.822° W
Petar Milošević · CC BY-SA 4.0 The mausoleum was designed by the Vietnamese architect Vo Toan and built between 1961, the year Mohammed V died, and 1971, when his remains were transferred here. Its structure is reinforced concrete, but the skin is white marble, and the forms are those of classical Moroccan architecture: horseshoe and polylobed arches, bands of carved sebka lattice.
Did you know? The mausoleum stands on the site of an Almohad mosque planned at about 183 by 139 metres.
04 Bou Inania Madrasa, Fez
Morocco · 1.9 km from Fez34.062° N 4.983° W
Bjørn Christian Tørrissen · CC BY-SA 3.0 Inside, the building is a demonstration of everything Marinid craftsmen could do. Around a marble-paved courtyard with a basin for ablutions, the walls are layered in the three materials of Marinid decoration: glazed zellij mosaic in geometric patterns, carved stucco as fine as lace, and carved cedar wood, darkened by time to the colour of honey. Student rooms open off galleries on two floors.
Did you know? Its original minbar of ebony and costly woods, inlaid in an eight-pointed star pattern, is now in the Dar Batha Museum in Fes.
05 Al-Attarine Madrasa
Morocco · 2.8 km from Fez34.065° N 4.974° W
Jerzystrzelecki · CC BY 3.0 Fes el Bali, the old walled city of Fez, grew around the Qarawiyyin Mosque, for centuries the chief centre of learning in Morocco, and its medina is today a World Heritage Site. The Marinid sultans, who ruled from Fez in the 13th to 15th centuries, built several madrasas close to the Qarawiyyin to lodge students — many of them poor and from distant towns — and to win over the city's scholars.
Did you know? A small ablutions hall opens off the north side of the entrance vestibule.
06 Saadian Tombs
Morocco · 2.1 km from Marrakesh31.617° N 7.989° W
C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0 The site was already a burial ground before the Saadians: the Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan was laid here briefly in 1351 before being moved to Chellah near Rabat, and his marble tombstone survives inside. The eastern mausoleum began as a small square chamber raised by Sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib between 1557 and 1574 over the grave of his father, Muhammad al-Shaykh, founder of the dynasty.
Did you know? Three marble dedication plaques were moved at some point from their original tombs into other chambers, and no one knows when or why.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful sacred places in Morocco?
- On our list, Koutoubia Mosque ranks first, followed by Hassan II Mosque and Mausoleum of Mohammed V.
- How tall is the minaret of the Hassan II Mosque?
- The minaret of the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca is 210 metres tall, which places it among the tallest minarets in the world. The mosque was completed in 1993 and is built partly on land reclaimed from the Atlantic.
- Why is it called the Koutoubia Mosque?
- The name comes from the Arabic word for booksellers. In the past, the area around the mosque was occupied by a market of booksellers and manuscript sellers.
- What is a madrasa?
- A madrasa is a college for Islamic learning. In medieval Morocco, madrasas such as Bou Inania and Al-Attarine in Fez housed students in small rooms around a central courtyard and included a prayer hall.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Morocco?
- The list covers 6 sacred places.