A town built on olive oil
Olive oil was the main source of the town’s wealth, alongside grain from the fertile plain below. Excavations have found 58 oil-pressing complexes, and one press has been reconstructed on the site.
A self-governing Roman town
After Rome annexed Mauretania in AD 44, Volubilis became a municipium, governed by magistrates elected each year. At its height, in the late 2nd century, it may have had about 20,000 inhabitants.
Walls on the edge of the empire
Rising tension with the peoples around the town led the emperor Marcus Aurelius to order a circuit of walls about two and a half kilometres long. A coin set into its stonework dates the Tingis Gate to AD 168–169.



