Rabat

The mouth of the Bou Regreg has been settled since antiquity. The Roman town of Sala Colonia stood on the site later walled as Chellah, and after Rome withdrew the place survived as a small Muslim town, with a religious fortress, a ribat, above the river mouth — the word that gave Rabat its name.

The city as it looks today began with the Almohads. Abd al-Mu'min fortified the kasbah in the 12th century as a base for campaigns in Spain, and his grandson Yaqub al-Mansur planned a vast imperial capital here in the 1190s: a new circuit of walls with gates such as Bab er-Rouah, and a congregational mosque whose minaret, the Hassan Tower, was abandoned unfinished when he died in 1199. The project collapsed, and the walls enclosed fields for centuries. The Marinids later turned the ruins of Sala into a royal necropolis at Chellah.

Rabat revived in the early 17th century, when Muslims expelled from Spain settled in the kasbah and the medina, laying out its straight streets. With Salé across the river, the town became a corsair base: the Salé Rovers raided shipping as far as the British Isles and for a time governed themselves as an independent republic, the Republic of Bou Regreg, before the Alaouite sultans brought them back under control. In 1912 the French made Rabat the capital of their protectorate, and Resident-General Lyautey built a new administrative city of avenues and ministries beside the medina, deliberately leaving the old town intact. Rabat stayed the capital after independence in 1956, grew into a government and university city of the modern era, and in 2012 its historic core and 20th-century town were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Rabat is Morocco's official city, and that shapes its character. Ministries, parliament, the royal palace, the embassies and Mohammed V University fill it with civil servants, diplomats and students; French is heard constantly alongside Darija, and the pace is quieter and more reserved than in Casablanca or Marrakech. There is little of the hard selling that visitors meet elsewhere, and the city is often described by Moroccans as clean, green and a little dull.

Its cultural life is mostly state-supported and international. The national modern art museum, the national library and the Royal Theatre on the river bank, designed by Zaha Hadid and opened in 2026, are all here, and the Mawazine festival each early summer fills open-air stages across Rabat and Salé with African, Arab and Western performers, drawing crowds from across the country. Chellah's ruins are used for concerts. Craft traditions continue in the medina and especially in Salé, where carpet-weaving, embroidery and pottery workshops still operate; Rabat carpets, geometric and brightly coloured, are a recognised style.

Salé keeps the more conservative and devout reputation of the two towns, with its own religious brotherhoods and its procession of carved wax lanterns on the eve of the Prophet's birthday, a custom said to date from the 16th century. On both banks the ordinary courtesies of Moroccan life hold: greetings before business, mint tea poured from a height, Friday couscous with family, and a sharp distinction between the relaxed dress of Agdal and the modesty expected in the old quarters.

About 516,000 people live in the city of Rabat itself at the 2024 census, but the built-up area running through Salé and Temara holds well over two million, and the city functions as the northern anchor of the Casablanca–Rabat–Kenitra corridor. Salé and Temara are largely dormitory towns, and the morning flow of commuters across the Bou Regreg bridges and on the tram is the defining rhythm of the working day.

Government is the economy: ministries, the central bank, the armed forces, foreign missions and the public agencies employ a large share of the workforce, alongside Mohammed V University and the private universities, hospitals and a growing technology and services sector on the Salé side of the river. There is little heavy industry. Incomes are relatively high by Moroccan standards, and so are rents, which pushes many families out to the suburbs.

The day starts early, slows in the afternoon and comes alive again at dusk, when the Ville Nouvelle cafés fill and families walk on the seafront and the riverside gardens. Middle-class life centres on Agdal and Hay Riad, a planned district of offices and apartment blocks south of the centre; older and poorer households live in the medina and in the dense quarters of Yacoub El Mansour and Salé. Housing cost, traffic and the long development works along the Bou Regreg are the recurring local complaints, and the capital has been a focus for national protests over schools and hospitals.

Rabat eats from the Atlantic. Sardines, sole, sea bream, prawns and calamari come in on the coast and are grilled plainly with cumin and salt at the quays, in the medina and at the fish stalls of Salé. Simple fried-fish plates with bread and a chopped salad of tomato and onion are a standard lunch, and snail broth, babbouche, is sold from steaming pots on the street in the cooler months.

Breakfast is bissara, a thick purée of dried broad beans with olive oil, cumin and chilli, or sfenj, rings of fried dough, taken with coffee or mint tea. The rest of the Moroccan repertoire is fully present: tagines of lamb with prunes or chicken with preserved lemon and olives, couscous on Fridays, harira soup, and pastilla, the sweet-savoury pie of pigeon or chicken with almonds and cinnamon, made for celebrations. Rfissa — shredded msemen flatbread soaked in a fenugreek, lentil and chicken broth — is a dish of the Atlantic plains served after a birth, and is common on family tables here.

Pastry shops sell kaab el ghzal, almond-filled crescents, chebakia soaked in honey and sesame during Ramadan, and French-style patisserie left over from the protectorate. The medina's Rue Souika is the place for olives, preserved lemons, dates and spices; the covered central market beside the walls supplies the restaurants; and the cafés of Agdal and Avenue Mohammed V, where coffee is drunk slowly at pavement tables, are as much a part of the city's food culture as any kitchen.