48 TRAVEL + LEISURE / JANUARY 2017
BEYOND
PilgrimageI
n the early spring, when I visited
Moulay Idriss, the climate was at its
most Mediterranean. The four-hour
drive from Casablanca took me
through forests of cork oaks, their
bark stripped to arm’s reach to
make corks for wine bottles. The
greens of the countryside were muted
and slightly dusty, the air was soft, and
there were olive trees everywhere.
Approaching the town from the
west, I saw a cluster of colourful boxes
framed by bare mountain peaks.
Reachable by just a pair of roads,
Moulay Idriss spreads across two
foothills of Mount Zerhoun, at the base
of the Atlas Mountains. Edith Wharton
came here in 1919, taking the same
route I did. In her travel book, In
Morocco, she described the “piled up
terraces and towns of the Sacred City
growing golden in the afternoon light
across the valley.”
Moulay Idriss was, until recently,
off -limits to non-Muslims between
3 pm and sunrise—Wharton had to
continue on to nearby Meknes to spend
the night. This was because of the
town’s holiness: it is a pilgrimage site,
the burial place of Moulay Idris Al
Akbar, a great-grandson of the Prophet
Muhammad. In 2005, Muhammed VI,
the current king of Morocco, issued a
decree to open the town to non-Muslim
visitors as part of his plan of Western-
oriented reform. Despite the lifting of
restrictions, the tourism infrastructure
that is so ubiquitous throughout the
rest of the country has been slow to
arrive here, and the place feels
suspended in time.
Centuries before Moulay Idriss
became sacred to Muslims, Romans
occupied the region. To reach the town
from Rabat or Casablanca, you must
navigate around Volubilis, the ruin of an
ancient Roman city about three miles
away whose UNESCO listing describes
architectural infl uences that “testify to
Mediterranean, Libyan and Moor, Punic,
Roman, and Arab-Islamic cultures as
well as African and Christian cultures.”
The farmers in the area tell stories about
turning up bits of antiquity—broken
relics and Roman stones—when tillingThe holy village of Moulay Idriss only recently opened to non-
Muslim visitors, which is why it is one of Morocco’s most authentic
and untrammelled outposts. Anna Heyward takes a look around.History
on a Hill
Dinner on the
terrace at
Scorpion House,
a private rental
house with
sensational views.Photographs by Céline Clanet
50 TRAVEL + LEISURE / JANUARY 2017