Clockwise from left: The ancient
Roman city of Volubilis; a young friend
of the owners of Walila Farm on the
property’s terrace pumpkin and
vegetable soup at Walila Farm.the earth. The logic of Moulay Idriss,
when seen from Volubilis, becomes
clear: it’s a raised, defensible outpost,
surrounded by arable land, which
allows occupants to see intruders
approaching. The town’s history has
imbued it with its own patchwork
quality. After the Romans left, it became
the seat of an Islamic dynasty. Then,
following the French conquest of
Morocco, it was remade as a weekend
destination for the ruling class.
One reason the Romans chose
Moulay Idriss was its potential for
making olive oil, which is today the
town’s primary product. Once a week,
a member of each family takes a bushel
of olives and a jug to the local press,
watches the machine churn, then
collects the oil to bring home. With just
under 12,000 residents, Moulay Idriss
is by no means a large town, but it feels
even smaller than it is.
When I arrived, I went to Dar
Zerhoune, a fi ve-bedroom inn that
opened in 2009 with a multi-storey
interior divided up by wooden beams
and balconies. Its owner is Rose
Button, a British expat who was one of
the fi rst non-Muslims to buy property
here. As you look out onto the
mountainside from the rooftop terrace,
it’s easy to think of Wharton again:
“The light had the preternatural purity
which gives a foretaste of mirage: it
was the light in which magic becomes
real, and which helps to understand
how, to people living in such an
atmosphere, the boundary between
fact and dream perpetually fl uctuates.”
The only other Westerner in town is
Mike Richardson, who left the London
food scene to set up Café Clock in Fez,
then bought a weekend home in Moulay
Idriss. After renovating it to emphasise
its open fi replaces, terraces, and picture
windows, he opened it to guests as
Scorpion House—or Dar Akrab, in
Arabic—in late 2015. It hangs on a cliff
just below the city’s lookout spot. The
terrace, where the cocktail hour takes
place at sunset, is an excellent place to
study the panorama of the adjacent hill
and discover that various sections of
town are each painted their own pastel
shade. It’s also a good vantage point forThe farmers in the area tell
stories about turning up bits of
antiquity when tilling the earth.