Volubilis: A Slow Morning in Morocco's Roman City

Most visitors meet Volubilis in a hurry. A coach pulls in from Fes at eleven o'clock, everyone walks briskly to the triumphal arch, takes a photograph, and is gone by half past twelve. We would like to suggest something else entirely.

Volubilis is one of the very few great ancient sites where almost nothing asks you to climb. There is no acropolis to conquer, no long stone staircase, no dark tunnel. The city lies open on a gentle green slope beneath Jebel Zerhoun, its columns standing among wheat and wildflowers, and it rewards the person who walks slowly far more than the person who walks fast.

Come early, when the light is low and the storks are still on their nests, and give yourself two unhurried hours. You will see more, feel better at the end of it, and understand why this quiet field of stone has been inhabited, abandoned and loved for more than two thousand years.

A little history

Volubilis began long before Rome arrived. A Berber settlement stood here from around the 3rd century BC, and by the late 1st century BC the town was part of the kingdom of Mauretania under Juba II, a scholarly king raised in Rome.

When the region was absorbed into the Roman Empire, Volubilis became one of the principal cities of the province of Mauretania Tingitana. It grew rich on olive oil and grain, and at its height is thought to have held something like twenty thousand people. Most of what you see today — the triumphal arch, the capitol, the basilica, the grand houses with their mosaic floors — belongs to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.

Rome withdrew from this frontier towards the end of the 3rd century, but the city did not empty. People went on living here for centuries, and in the late 8th century Volubilis sheltered Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty and the man whose tomb still draws pilgrims to the hill town next door. Slowly the population moved away, the stone was carried off, and the fields took over.

The site covers roughly 42 hectares, of which only about half has been excavated. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997.

The triumphal arch at Volubilis, raised in honour of the emperor Caracalla in AD 217.

What to see

The entrance is at the southern, lower end of the site, and the famous monuments stand at the northern, upper end. The walk between them is a long, gentle rise — not steep, but steady, and roughly a kilometre each way if you see everything.

The Arch of Caracalla

The most photographed thing in Morocco's countryside. It was raised in AD 217 in honour of the emperor Caracalla and his mother Julia Domna, and once carried a bronze chariot on top. What you see was re-erected in the 1930s and corrected again in the 1960s. Stand back from it, on the main street, and the arch frames the whole valley.

The Capitol, forum and basilica

Built on the high ground, as Roman civic centres always were. The capitol, dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, dates from AD 218; its stepped platform and re-erected columns are the silhouette you will recognise from postcards. Beside it lies the forum, a broad open rectangle of about 1,300 square metres, and the basilica — the law court and business hall — whose arcaded walls are the tallest ruins on the site.

The House of Orpheus

The largest and finest of the excavated houses, near the lower part of the city. Its dining room floor shows Orpheus surrounded by animals he has charmed with his music; another room has a mosaic of dolphins. Look, too, for the stone olive presses tucked into several of these houses — Volubilis was a working oil town as much as a Roman showpiece.

The storks

White storks nest on the tops of the columns, clattering their bills at each other. They are not an official monument, but for many visitors they are the memory that lasts.

Columns of the capitol at Volubilis, with a stork's nest on one of them.

The mosaics left where they lie

At most Roman sites the mosaics have long since been lifted and carried off to a museum in a distant capital. Volubilis is different: a great many of its floors are still in the rooms they were made for, open to the sky.

This is the real pleasure of a slow visit. You walk from house to house along low walls that map out dining rooms, courtyards and bedrooms, and the pictures appear at your feet — hunting scenes, sea creatures, gods, geometric borders in ochre, slate-grey and white. Because they lie flat on the ground, you look down rather than up, which is easy on the neck and the balance.

A few practical notes. The mosaics are fenced or roped in places, and are best seen when the sun is low and the colours are not bleached out. After rain they can be slick, and the ground around them is uneven. Take your time; there is no queue here, and nobody will hurry you along.

A mosaic floor at Volubilis, still in place among the ruins.

A day trip nearby: Moulay Idriss Zerhoun

Only about 4 km away, spread across two hills, is Moulay Idriss Zerhoun — a white town built around the tomb of Idris I, the founder of Morocco's first Arab-Islamic dynasty and one of the country's most revered figures. It is an easy ten-minute drive, and the two places are usually visited together.

Be warned, kindly: this is the opposite of Volubilis. The lanes are narrow, very steep and full of steps, and the celebrated viewpoints over the rooftops involve a real climb. The shrine itself is a place of pilgrimage and is not open to non-Muslim visitors.

If stairs are difficult, there is still a lovely version of this trip. Ask your driver to stop at one of the viewpoints on the approach road, where the whole town rises in front of you like a white amphitheatre, then have mint tea on a terrace in the lower part of town, buy a slab of the local nougat, and leave the alleys to younger legs. Many travellers also find that staying a night here, in one of the small guesthouses, is the calmest possible base for an early morning at the ruins.

Fields near Volubilis, with stone blocks and overgrown plants in the foreground.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• There is almost no shade. This is the single most important thing to know. Bring a hat, sunglasses and more water than you think you need, and aim to arrive soon after opening or in the last hours of the afternoon. Midday in June, July or August is genuinely punishing.
• The ground is uneven, not stepped. You will walk on grass, gravel, loose stone and ancient paving with cart ruts and gaps. There are very few actual stairs, which is good news for knees, but poor news for anyone unsteady on rough surfaces. Closed, flat shoes with grip are essential; sandals are not.
• Expect a gentle, continuous slope. The entrance sits low and the main monuments sit high. Plan on roughly 1.5 to 2 km of walking in total, spread over two hours or so, and treat the walk up as the effort and the walk back as the reward.
• A wheelchair or walking frame will struggle. Beyond the area near the entrance building, the terrain is not suitable. Travellers who cannot manage rough ground can still see a good deal from the lower paths and from the road above the site.
• Hire a licensed guide at the entrance. An hour or so with a guide turns a field of stones into a city, and — quietly useful — a guide will naturally set an unhurried pace and choose the shortest sensible route.
• Sit down on purpose. There are few benches, but plenty of low walls and fallen blocks. Building two or three deliberate rests into the visit is what makes it enjoyable rather than exhausting.
• Toilets and refreshments are at the entrance building only. Use them before you set off up the hill.
• Go with your own car or driver if you can. Arriving by shared taxi means a walk in from the main road; a private driver can drop you at the gate and wait.

Ruins of Volubilis, with scattered stone blocks in the foreground and arches behind.

What to eat

This is olive country, and it always has been — the Romans here grew rich on oil, and the hills around Meknes and Zerhoun are still silver-green with groves. Ask for local olives and a dish of new oil with warm bread, and you are eating the reason Volubilis existed.

For lunch, the classics are the right choice. Kefta, spiced minced meat, comes either grilled on skewers or simmered in a tagine of tomato sauce with eggs cracked on top. Chicken with preserved lemon and olives is the regional standby. Harira, the thick lentil and tomato soup, is comforting even in warm weather, and there is usually a bowl of orange slices dusted with cinnamon to finish.

There are a few restaurants and cafés immediately around the site and on the road to Moulay Idriss, several with terraces that look straight down over the ruins and the plain. In Moulay Idriss, buy a piece of the town's well-known nougat to take away. Meknes, half an hour off, has the widest choice of proper restaurants if you are staying the night.

Getting there

Volubilis sits in the Fès-Meknès region of northern Morocco, at the foot of Jebel Zerhoun, surrounded by farmland.

Our verdict

Volubilis is one of the kindest great ruins we know. It asks for sun protection, sensible shoes and a steady pace, and in return it gives you an entire Roman city at eye level, with no stairs to climb and no crowds if you arrive early.

We would happily send any reader over sixty here, with one condition: do not treat it as a stop between Fes and Meknes. Sleep nearby, walk up through the houses while the grass is still damp, sit on a warm stone by the basilica, and let the storks and the wind do the talking. Two hours spent that way are worth a week of hurried sightseeing.

And if the climb to the arch feels like enough for one morning, it is enough. The finest view of Volubilis has always been the one you take in sitting down.

The ruins of Volubilis in the countryside of northern Morocco.

“A city that no longer needs walls, only wheat, wind and the patient company of storks.”

Photo credits

• Volubilis - wide view: Pilecka, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Arco Triunfal de Caracalla. Volúbilis: José Luis Filpo Cabana, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Volubilis,Morocco: Marcin Sochacki Wanted, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Morocco - Mosaic floor, Volubilis: IP. Hughes, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Fields near Volubilis, Morocco: FuriousYogi, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Ruins of Volubilis Morocco: FuriousYogi, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Volubilis, Morocco 5415629501 5: YoTuT from United States, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons