Rabat Emerges as Morocco’s Rising Tourist Destination, Challenging Marrakech

Rather sober urban planning, with wide avenues like Mohammed V, former post office from the 1920s, Mohammed VI Tower (first tallest in Morocco and second tallest tower in Africa), grand theater designed by renowned British architect Zaha Hadid, magnificent Andalusian gardens with tropical plantations, old citadel of the Kasbah of the Oudayas, with its blue and white alleys to delight Instagram fans, small souk accessible on foot, beaches with ideal waves for surfing... Rabat has much to attract tourists. Cathys Adams, chief travel editor for The Times and The Sunday Times, fell in love with it. With a friend, she visited the entire city.

"Rabat is Morocco’s green city - even the busy streets are lined with carefully maintained lawns - and if you walk around the center, as we did, you’ll quickly come across a pretty park or flower garden," she describes. "On our way to the excellent Palestinian restaurant Sufra for a lunch of shish tawook chicken, tabbouleh and Gaza salad (dishes from £3), we stroll through the ordinary Nouzhat Hassan garden, a discreet place with drooping ficus and gnarled banyans, where children laugh on playground equipment." Their favorite spot, she says, is the magnificent Andalusian garden, just outside the kasbah, "a Moorish paradise teeming with palm trees, orange trees, roses, lavender, wild garlic, angel’s trumpets and hundreds of cats purring in the sun."

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Cathy invites tourists to visit Rabat before Marrakech. She visited the city and compared the two cities. "The only way to get there is to take a Ryanair flight four times a week from London or a twice-weekly flight from Manchester, which lands at the small Rabat-Salé airport (although a new terminal is planned for this year). Otherwise, it’s a one-hour drive from nearby Casablanca, or a 3.5-hour fast train from Marrakech. For a capital on the fringes of Europe, it is delightfully off the beaten path," she advises.