Volubilis

Volubilis sits on a gentle ridge below the Zerhoun massif, looking over a plain of olive groves north of Meknes, and the olive is the key to the whole place. Rome's westernmost towns rarely looked this prosperous: the city's wealth came from oil, and the remains of dozens of presses are scattered among the houses, one of them rebuilt with a full-size replica of a Roman press. At its height in the late 2nd century perhaps 20,000 people lived within a 2.6 km circuit of walls enclosing about 42 hectares, of which roughly half has been excavated.

Settlement here long predates Rome. A Punic temple and Phoenician inscriptions show a Carthaginian presence by the 3rd century BC, and the town may have been a capital of the Berber kingdom of Mauretania before Claudius annexed it in 44 AD. Rome withdrew around 285, but the city lived on for centuries as a Latin-speaking Christian community and then an early Islamic town. In the late 8th century Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty, made it his seat; after power moved to Fez the population drifted to the new holy town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, about 5 km away and still visible across the valley. The ruins stood largely intact until an earthquake in 1755, after which they were quarried for building stone for Meknes.

The centre of the city is dominated by two reconstructed monuments: the basilica, completed in the early 3rd century and among the finest in Roman Africa, and the Capitoline Temple behind it, reached by a flight of thirteen steps. The main street, the Decumanus Maximus, runs from the Arch of Caracalla, raised in 217 by the city's governor and restored by the French in the 1930s, towards the smaller Tingis Gate. The real treasures are underfoot. Many mosaics remain in the houses where they were laid: Orpheus charming the animals with his lyre, an acrobat riding a donkey backwards, the Labours of Hercules, Bacchus finding the sleeping Ariadne, and the richly paved rooms of the House of Venus. The best bronzes found here, including a bust of Cato the Younger, are now in the archaeological museum in Rabat.

UNESCO inscribed the site in 1997 as an exceptionally well-preserved Roman colonial town on the edge of the empire.

Getting there

The site lies about 31 km north of Meknes and about 18 km from the town of Ouislane. The nearest airport is Fès–Saïss (FEZ), about 56 km away. From Meknes, shared grand taxis run to Moulay Idriss, a drive of about half an hour, from where Volubilis is a short taxi ride or a walk of roughly 30–40 minutes; taxis can also be hired for the round trip from Meknes or Fez.