Bahia Palace

The Ministry of Culture describes the monument in one sentence: built in two phases over an area of 8 hectares during the second half of the 19th century, with courtyards, gardens, salons and outbuildings in marble, moucharabieh, zellij, stained glass, carved and painted wood and stucco. That is the whole official description: no room list, no plan, no route and no visit length.

The first phase belongs to Si Moussa, a chamberlain who rose to grand vizier under Sultan Sidi Muhammad ben Abderrahmane. Two chambers beside the garden carry an inscription dating them to 1866 and 1867, the oldest datable fabric a visitor walks past. The second phase belongs to his son Ba Ahmed, who held the same office and expanded the house between 1894 and 1900.

The marble grand courtyard, where every photograph is taken, is dated 1896 to 1897: the part that looks like the heart of the palace is the newest room in it.

Al-Bahia means "the brilliant", and it was reportedly the name of Ba Ahmed's favourite wife rather than a description of the building. The architect of the expansion was Muhammad ibn Makki al-Misfiwi, 1857 to 1926, one of the few nineteenth-century Moroccan builders whose name survives attached to a building you can walk into.

Why the rooms are empty

Visitors leave disappointed that there is no furniture, and the reason is a single afternoon. Ba Ahmed died in 1900 and within hours Sultan Abdelaziz reportedly ordered the palace looted, so what you walk through is a shell emptied deliberately and never refilled: the ceilings, the doors and the tilework carry the whole visit. In 1908 Madani el-Glaoui took control and added upper floors; from 1912 it housed the French resident-general, and that occupation is why the building was kept in repair rather than left to fall in like the ruin across the Mellah.

The small riad garden. A long corridor opens into a planted courtyard with a fountain, banana and citrus, rooms on all four sides. It is the quietest space in the palace because groups walk through it towards the marble, and the painted cedar doors here are the best preserved in the building, close enough to see the brush marks.

The grand courtyard. Fifty metres by thirty, an Italian marble chequer inside a painted cedar arcade. No planting and no shade in the middle, which is the point: it was built to be crossed in procession, not sat in. At midday it is the hottest place on the site and where every coach group stops, so walk the arcade rather than the open.

The council chamber and the great rooms. The reception rooms off the courtyards are where the ceilings are: painted cedar in geometric coffers, muqarnas plaster in the corners, stained glass in the upper lights, zellij dados at shoulder height. Nothing is labelled and nothing is roped, so the only limit on how long you stand is your neck.

The apartments. The smaller courtyards on the far side, including the rooms built for Lalla Zaynab in 1898, are cooler, lower and domestic. On half an hour this is the part to cut, and it is also the part most worth having if you can spare the time.

The renovation question

One of the operator listings for the palace states plainly that some sections are under renovation. The Ministry publishes no schedule of works and no list of open wings, so the honest answer is that parts of it usually are, that nobody official says which, and that the main courtyards stay open. Ask at the window before you pay if a particular room decides your morning.

The variable is not the size of the palace, it is whether you look up. Walked at the pace the route allows, the complex takes half an hour and you will remember the marble and nothing else. The ceilings are why the building is famous, and they cost time because nothing is labelled and there is nowhere to sit.

Whichever routing you pick, arrive at 09:00: the first coach groups reach the gate after 10:00.

For comparison, the ruin at El Badi takes about an hour and the Saadian Tombs rarely more than 30 minutes, because the queue for the main chamber is the visit. A morning starting here at 09:00 holds all three and still finishes before the afternoon heat, which is the shape the one-day plan uses.

The published hours are 09:00 to 17:00, and that is the entire statement: no seasonal variation, no ticket-window closing time, no last-entry rule and no closing day. Neither the Ministry page for this palace nor the ones for El Badi and the Saadian Tombs names a weekly rest day. Anything telling you the Bahia shuts on a Tuesday, or closes two hours at midday, is not quoting the operator, because the operator has published nothing to quote.

Friday is the busiest day, and it is a tariff question

The Ministry grants free entry to Moroccan nationals every Friday and on the first day of national and religious holidays; a visitor pays the full 100 MAD on those days like any other. The consequence nobody writes down is that the courtyards are at their fullest on a Friday afternoon while costing you exactly the same, so a Friday morning is worth more here than on any other day. The Friday and holiday openings page lists which monuments the rule covers.

The quiet slots

Two: 09:00 to 09:45, before the coaches on Avenue Imam El Ghazali empty into the corridor, and 16:00 to 17:00, when the light in the grand courtyard is at its best angle and the groups have moved on. Between 10:00 and 12:00 the arcade is a queue of tripods. None of this is an official figure; it is what a group day does to a one-way route.

- The eight hectares are not the building. The Ministry describes the monument as spanning eight hectares, and it is right about the enclosure, but the palace complex you actually walk covers roughly two hectares and about 150 rooms; the rest is garden and outbuilding [Ministry of Culture ticket page for the Bahia; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahia_Palace]. - The most photographed room is the newest. The marble grand courtyard is dated 1896–1897, thirty years after the inscribed chambers beside the garden, which carry 1866–1867 [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahia_Palace]. - A Moroccan pays 30 MAD where you pay 100. The two-tier tariff is printed on the Ministry's own page, along with free entry for Moroccan nationals every Friday and on the first day of national and religious holidays. Almost no English-language page states it [Ministry of Culture ticket page for the Bahia]. - The Ministry publishes no closing day and no accessibility statement. Its page for the palace carries prices, a history paragraph and the Friday rule, and contains not one occurrence of accessibilité, mobilité réduite, handicap, fauteuil or PMR beyond the free-entry line itself; there is no palais-bahia.ma and the palace is not one of the Fondation Nationale des Musées museums [our sweep of the Ministry page for this guide]. - The same official page's neighbour describes the wrong palace. The Ministry's ticket page for El Badi opens by saying the palace was "founded in 1886 at the behest of Abi Imrane Moussa Ben Ahmed Ben Mbarek, grand vizier" and later expanded by his son, which is the Bahia's story, not El Badi's, printed on the wrong monument Ministry of Culture ticket page for El Badi; the finding is set out on [the El Badi page].

On foot from Jemaa el-Fna is about fifteen minutes: leave the square at its south-east corner and follow Riad Zitoun el-Jdid straight down, shops the whole way, ending within sight of the palace wall. It is one of the few medina walks that needs no map, which is why the square's own page sends you this way. From El Badi it is eight minutes through the Mellah; from Dar Si Said, five.

By petit taxi, ask for Bab Mellah and expect to be dropped on Avenue Imam El Ghazali, because the lanes beyond are too narrow. The meter is compulsory under a 1963 dahir restated by Interior Ministry circulars, and no Marrakech authority publishes the per-kilometre rates, so the running meter is your protection rather than a price list. Getting around sets out what is and is not published.

The door. One visitor entrance, off the forecourt on Avenue Imam El Ghazali, with the ticket window beside it. There is no group door and no reserved-ticket lane because there are no reserved tickets: a Ministry e-ticket and a paper ticket join the same short line. Queues here are minutes, not the half-hours at the Saadian Tombs, where the bottleneck is the tomb chamber rather than the till.

The standard morning, and the reason the guided cards here bundle the same three monuments, runs: Bahia at 09:00, El Badi at 10:15, the Saadian Tombs at 11:30, lunch in the Kasbah. Three monuments at 100 MAD each is $32.00 (300 MAD) per foreign adult before you have eaten; the costs page sets that against the rest of a day.

The alternative, for anyone who would rather see one great interior than three, is the Bahia at 09:00 and then north to the Ben Youssef Madrasa and the souks, the route the four-hour walk with the madrasa takes. Either way the palace goes first: it is the one monument in the group whose interior is ruined by a crowd rather than merely slowed by one. The one-day plan and the three-day plan both open on this gate.