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Basillica

The remains of the Roman town of Volubilis are located about 35km northwest of Meknes. Located on the top of a small hill within close proximity to the nearby village of Moulay Idriss, the site provides wonderful views of all the surrounding area, which, according to wiki, was planted in wheat for export to the rest of the Empire.

We spent a most satisfying day there as part of our visit to the Imperial City of Meknes. Fortunately, the weather gods smiled on us and the generally rainy weather stayed away for the six or seven hours that we spent hiking from one end to the other of the site. Lonely Planet estimates a two-hour visit for most people, four hours for more complete coverage, and a whole day for a thorough visit of the site. I guess we qualify as thorough tourists.

The quality of the remains is surprisingly high. In particular the half-dozen or so mosaics are in very good shape given that they are not covered or protected in any way except by a rope to keep the visitors from stepping on them. Their state of preservation impressed us as better than most of the mosaics still in situ in Ostia Antica just outside of Rome.

Some reconstruction of buildings has been done and redone and we are grateful for it. Broken columns on the ground are much less evocative than the same fragments re-assembled. The central part of the town, the forum, the capitol, and the triumphal arch dedicated to Caracalla and his wife Julia have all been re-erected to some extent and give the visitor a real sense of what the town was once like.

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