Meknes

Once the pride of Morocco’s most fearsome ruler, Meknes is now a thriving provincial town surrounded by farmland and vineyards.  It boasts a fascinating medina and the remains of Moulay Ismail’s grand plans to rival the capital cities of Europe, his legacy of marble and blood.   If the Sultan was not happy with the work of the 50,000 captives used to work on his city they would be decapitated or have their throat slit and their blood was mixed with the cement!  His stables there, which are well worth a visit, once housed 12,000 horses!  The city became a Unesco World Heritage site in 1996 and since then a lot of restoration work has been going on.