Bahia Palace

The Bahia Palace is not one building but a sequence of them, grown over four decades the way a Marrakesh house grows: a garden here, a courtyard there, corridors bending to join them. That lack of a master plan is exactly what makes walking through it so rewarding. Each doorway opens onto a different light — a shaded orchard, a blinding marble court, a small room whose ceiling seems to have been embroidered rather than built. Spread over roughly two hectares and holding around 150 rooms, it is one of the fullest expressions of late nineteenth-century Moroccan domestic architecture anywhere.

The oldest part was raised in the 1860s by Si Musa, a grand vizier who came from a family of Black servants of the royal government and rose to the highest offices of the state; inscriptions in two chambers of his garden date them to 1866–67. His son Ba Ahmed, who effectively ran Morocco as grand vizier under the young Sultan Abdelaziz, expanded the palace enormously between 1894 and 1900, employing the architect Muhammad ibn Makki al-Misfiwi from Safi. The name al-Bahia, "the Brilliant", is said to have belonged to his favourite wife. The palace later served as the residence of the French Resident-General through the years of the Protectorate (1912–1956), before passing to the Moroccan state.

What to look for is above all the craftsmanship. Cedar from the Middle Atlas was carved and painted into ceilings of dense floral patterns; walls carry bands of sculpted stucco over dados of zellij, the cut-tile mosaic that came here from workshops in Tetouan, while marble was brought from Meknes. The Grand Courtyard, about 50 by 30 metres and paved in Carrara marble, is ringed by a painted wooden gallery behind which lie some eighty rooms thought to have housed the women of the household. By contrast, the older Grand Riad of Si Musa is a deep, green garden still shaded by trees planted in the nineteenth century — come in the morning to see the light fall through them onto the tiled paths.

The palace sits inside the walled medina of Marrakesh, just north of the old Jewish quarter, the Mellah, and close to Dar Si Said, the house of Ba Ahmed's brother, now a museum of Moroccan arts. The medina around it is a labyrinth of narrow lanes behind red earthen walls, and the palace is best reached on foot through them.

Getting there

The palace is in the Méchouar-Kasba district of the Marrakesh medina, about 2 km from the medina's central neighbourhoods. Marrakesh Menara Airport (RAK) is about 5 km away by straight line; from there a taxi reaches the medina gates in a short ride, and the last stretch is a walk through the old town lanes, where cars cannot follow.