A Roman colonial town of about 42 hectares on the edge of the empire near Meknes, and the reason to come is that the mosaics are still on the floors they were laid on, in the houses they were laid in, out in the open air. It started as a Berber settlement in the third century BC, went through Carthaginian and Roman hands, and in the eighth century became the base of Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty and effectively of Morocco. Power moved to Fes and the town emptied by the eleventh century. The 1755 earthquake, the same one that levelled Lisbon, brought much of it down, and Moulay Ismaïl then quarried the ruins for his palace at Meknes, which is why the columns you see are the ones that were not worth carrying. UNESCO listed it in 1997.
Near Meknes, Morocco
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