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El Badi Palace
Marrakech, Morocco · Palaces & landmarks
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
Courtyards, gardens and finely decorated rooms offer several ways into the story of Bahia Palace.
On this page
A palace of two viziers
Bahia Palace was begun by the grand vizier Si Moussa in the second half of the 19th century and greatly enlarged by his son Ba Ahmed between 1894 and 1900.
It was built as a residence, not a fortress: a sequence of courtyards, gardens, apartments and reception rooms that opens up as you walk through it.
Craft in every room
Painted cedar ceilings, carved stucco, carved doors and zellij reward a closer look. Notice how a ceiling’s pattern answers the tiles below, and how light falls into a room from its courtyard.
The scale changes as you move: wide open courtyards, then intimate rooms and shaded riads.
A palace in the medina
Bahia Palace stands within the Medina of Marrakesh, which UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1985. The designation concerns the medina; it is not an accreditation of Apollonaut.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
