Three days in Rabat: the capital everybody passes through
Two nights on the Atlantic: a blue and white kasbah above the river mouth, a Roman town full of storks, and Sale across the water.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Rabat
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
Rabat gets passed through. The trains stop here on the way between Marrakech and Tangier, people look up from a book, and then they carry on to somewhere with a bigger reputation. It is the quietest big city in Morocco, and after Marrakech or Fez that alone is worth two nights: nobody follows you down the street, nobody tells you the road is closed, and the medina is small enough to cross in fifteen minutes.
What is here is unusually good. A twelfth century kasbah on a cliff above the river mouth, painted white and blue and almost silent. A vast unfinished minaret standing over a field of stumps, abandoned when the sultan who ordered it died in 1199. A walled Roman town on the edge of the city that later became a royal necropolis and is now largely occupied by storks. And across the water, Sale, older than Rabat and much less visited.
Three days does it comfortably, with an afternoon spare for the beach or the pastry shops on Avenue Mohammed V. The whole thing works on foot and one tram line.
Highlights
- The Kasbah of the Oudaias: blue and white lanes, an Andalusian garden and the Atlantic below
- Chellah, a Roman town turned Merinid necropolis, with storks nesting on the minaret
- The Hassan Tower, a mosque abandoned in 1199 and never finished
- The bronzes from Volubilis in the archaeological museum, the best Roman collection in Morocco
Where to stay
Rabat, two nights
Rabat sits at the mouth of the Bou Regreg, facing Sale across the water. Its name means fortified place, and that is what it started as: an Almohad ribat, a fortress-monastery, on the cliff where the kasbah still stands. In the seventeenth century the estuary was a corsair republic that made a living from the Atlantic shipping lanes, and in 1912 the French made it the administrative capital, which it has been ever since.
That gives it an unusual layered shape for a Moroccan city, and it is why UNESCO listed the whole thing in 2012, colonial avenues and all: the Roman ruins, the medieval kasbah, the seventeenth century medina and the twentieth century planned city sit in concentric rings rather than replacing each other.
Two nights is enough for all four layers without hurrying, and leaves a morning for Sale, which is older than Rabat and feels it.
Day by day
Day 1 in Rabat
The medina, the kasbah and mint tea over the estuary
Start in the old medina, which is a surprise to anyone who has come from Fez: a grid, more or less, laid out by Andalusian refugees in the seventeenth century, with a covered market, whitewashed houses and streets you cannot get lost in. Rue des Consuls, where the foreign envoys lived before the French arrived, is now the carpet street and the one to walk slowly.
It leads north to the Kasbah of the Oudaias, the oldest part of the city, entered through a monumental Almohad gate of carved stone that has been standing since the 1190s. Inside, the lanes are painted white on top and deep blue below, hung with bougainvillea, and almost entirely residential; there is no market and very little to buy, which is the point.
At the far end an Andalusian garden runs along the walls, and beyond it a platform looks out over the river mouth, the beach and the Atlantic. The cafe on the terrace below serves mint tea and almond pastries at plastic tables above the water, and nobody minds how long you stay.
- 15:00
Old Medina
VisitEnter from Avenue Hassan II and walk north. Less crowded and far easier to navigate than the medinas of Fez or Marrakech.
- 16:45
Kasbah of the Oudaias
HistoricFree to walk into through the great gate. Half an hour of lanes, then the garden and the platform at the ocean end.
- 18:30
Cafe Maure
OtherThe terrace cafe below the kasbah walls, looking across to Sale. Mint tea, sweet pastries and one of the best seats in the country.
- 20:15
Dinner in the medina
EatThe grill places off Rue Souika do skewers, sardines and harira for very little, and the pastry shops downtown stay open late.
With more time: The Chouhada cemetery lies between the kasbah and the sea, thousands of whitewashed graves on the slope facing the Atlantic. Walking the coast road past it towards the Oudaias at sunset is the best half hour in Rabat.
Day 2 in Rabat
Chellah, the Roman bronzes and the Hassan Tower
Chellah first, before the heat. It is a walled enclosure on a slope above the river, and inside it are the remains of the Roman town of Sala Colonia, a forum, a road and a bathhouse, with a fourteenth century Merinid royal necropolis built on top of them: a ruined mosque, a minaret and a set of tombs among fig trees and wild fennel. Storks nest on the tops of the walls and the minaret, in numbers that have to be seen.
Then into town for the archaeological museum, which is small, old-fashioned and holds the best Roman collection in the country: the bronzes lifted from Volubilis, including the head of Juba II and a very good dog, plus Punic and prehistoric material from all over Morocco. An hour is plenty.
Finish in the late afternoon at the Hassan Tower. Yaqub al-Mansur began an enormous mosque here in the 1190s and died before it was done, leaving a minaret at less than half its intended height and a field of some two hundred stumpy columns where the prayer hall would have been. The mausoleum of Mohammed V, opened in 1967, stands at the other end of the platform, all white marble and carved cedar, guarded by men in scarlet on horseback.
- 09:00
Chellah
HistoricTwenty minutes on foot from the mausoleum platform, or a couple of dirhams in a petit taxi. Go at opening time for the birds and the cool; allow an hour and a half.
- 11:30
National Archaeological Museum
CultureSmall, dusty and worth it for the Volubilis bronzes alone. Check the opening hours before you cross town.
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- 13:00
Lunch downtown
EatAvenue Mohammed V and the streets off it have French bakeries, Syrian grills and old cafes with pavement tables. This is where Rabat eats at one o'clock.
- 17:00
Hassan Tower and the Royal Mausoleum
HistoricFree, open into the evening, and best in the last hour of light when the marble goes orange. Dress respectfully for the mausoleum.
With more time: Bab er-Rouah, the Gate of the Winds, is one of the finest Almohad gates anywhere and stands ten minutes west of the museum on the way to the Royal Palace grounds, which you can walk through but not enter.
Day 3 in Rabat
Across the river to Sale
Take the tram over the bridge on the last morning. Sale is the older of the two cities and has never been the tourist one, which shows the moment you walk through the gate: a medina of narrow winding lanes, mostly residential, with a working market and almost no signage in any language you read.
The thing to see is the Marinid madrasa next to the great mosque, a small fourteenth century college with the same carved cedar, stucco and zellij as the famous ones in Fez, at a fraction of the size and usually with nobody else in it. Climb to the roof for a view over the medina and back across the estuary to the Oudaias.
Come back over the water in time for the train. Rabat Ville is central, which is the one thing that makes this city easy to leave: fifteen minutes from the medina gate to the platform.
- 09:00
Medina of Salé
OtherTen minutes across the river by tram. Older, narrower and quieter than Rabat's medina, and almost entirely a place people live.
- 10:45
Marinid Madrasa
HistoricA fourteenth century college beside the great mosque, which is itself closed to non-Muslims. Small, exquisite, and often empty. Go up to the roof.
- 12:30
Tram back and train out
TravelThe tram drops you outside Rabat Ville station. Casablanca is an hour south; northbound high-speed services to Tangier leave from Rabat Agdal.
With more time: With a later train, the beach below the kasbah is a working city beach with surf schools and rented boards, and St Peter's cathedral downtown is a white art deco oddity worth five minutes on the way to the station.
Before you go
Getting here and away
Rabat is on the main railway and trains are the obvious way in. Casablanca is an hour away, Tangier a little over an hour on the high-speed line, Fez two and a half hours, and Marrakech about four. Rabat Ville is the downtown station and the one you want; Rabat Agdal, three kilometres south, is where the Al Boraq high-speed services call, so check which station your ticket names.
The city has its own airport at Sale, but the flight choice is thin. Most people fly into Casablanca and take the train up, which is easy and takes about an hour from Casa Voyageurs.
Chefchaouen is a four and a half hour bus, and Meknes and Fez are a comfortable morning east by rail.
Getting around
Two tram lines run through Rabat and across the bridge into Sale, they cost a few dirhams a ride, and one of the stops is directly outside Rabat Ville station. That covers the one journey that is too far to walk.
Everything else on these three days is within about two kilometres of the medina, and the walk along the river to the kasbah, or the coast road past the cemetery to the Oudaias, is a large part of the pleasure. Blue petit taxis are metered, cheap and, unusually for Morocco, generally run the meter without being asked.
Chellah is the one sight far enough out to be worth a taxi in the heat: a twenty minute walk uphill from the Hassan Tower, or five minutes by car.
Where to stay
The medina has a growing number of small guesthouses in old houses, and unlike Marrakech or Fez you can generally get a car or a taxi within a minute of the door. It puts the kasbah, the beach and the tram all within a short walk.
The downtown grid around Avenue Mohammed V has the business hotels and the art deco architecture, and is convenient for the station and the restaurants. Agdal, further south, is where the modern city eats and drinks and is a long way from the sights.
Rabat is a diplomatic city, so hotel prices are steadier and slightly higher than the tourist towns, and rooms are easy to find at short notice except around state occasions.
What to expect
It is an easy-going city. Touts are rare, the medina is a shopping street rather than a maze, and solo travellers of either sex report less hassle here than anywhere else in the country. Ordinary caution in crowds still applies.
Dress is a shade more relaxed than Fez and a shade more formal than the coast: this is a city of civil servants and students. Working mosques, including the great mosque in Sale, are closed to non-Muslims, but the madrasa beside it is not.
Spring and autumn are ideal. The Atlantic keeps summer down to something reasonable, which is why the capital is bearable in August when Marrakech is not, and winter is mild, grey and wet in patches.
Rabat is the Moroccan city that asks least of you and gives back more than its reputation suggests. The kasbah at six in the evening, the storks over Chellah, the empty madrasa in Sale and the tea terrace over the estuary are all quiet pleasures, and the absence of anybody trying to sell you a carpet is not the smallest of them.
It also makes the best break in a longer journey. Two nights here between Marrakech and Fez turns a hard travel day into an easy one, and you see a capital most visitors only see from a train window.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Rabat worth three days?
- Two full days plus a morning is about right, and more than most itineraries give it. The kasbah and medina fill an afternoon, Chellah and the Hassan Tower fill a day, and Sale is a half day. If you only have one day, do the kasbah and Chellah and skip the rest.
- Rabat or Casablanca?
- Rabat, easily, unless you specifically want the Hassan II mosque. Rabat has the older monuments, the better medina, the sea and none of the traffic, and the two are an hour apart by train if you want both.
- Is Rabat safe and relaxed?
- It is the easiest large Moroccan city for a first-time visitor. Very little hassle, no faux guides to speak of, a working tram, and a medina you cannot get lost in. Normal precautions in crowds are still sensible.
- How do I get to Chellah?
- It is about twenty minutes on foot from the Hassan Tower, uphill at the end, or five minutes in a petit taxi. There is an entrance fee, it opens in the morning, and it is much better before the middle of the day.
- Can I use this as part of a longer trip?
- Copy it and slot it in: Rabat sits exactly halfway between Marrakech and Tangier on the railway, which makes it the natural two night break in a north-south run through the country.