Rabat: the Kasbah of the Udayas on the Atlantic

Administrative capital of Morocco since 1912, Rabat maintains a more tranquil pace than other major cities in the kingdom, with a fortress overlooking the ocean that predates the city's current political role by centuries.

The center can be explored comfortably on foot along the mouth of the Bou Regreg River.

White and blue houses, narrow alleys that open unexpectedly onto terraces overlooking the ocean: the day begins at the Kasbah of Oudaya, a twelfth-century fortress at the river mouth, still inhabited as an ordinary neighborhood of the city.

Across the river, a short distance away, you can see the Hassan Tower: in 1195 the sultan Yacoub al-Mansour ordered its construction to surpass the Koutoubia in Marrakech, but his death left it stopped at forty-four meters, beside the Mausoleum of Mohammed V where the last two kings of Morocco rest.

Moving further into the city you reach Chellah, a fourteenth-century Marinid necropolis built on the remains of the Roman city of Sala Colonia: white storks nest today among its ruined minarets, in an almost abandoned garden just steps from the country's administrative center.

To close the tour, you don't enter the Royal Palace, the sovereign's official residence, but guards in traditional uniforms still preside over the entrance square, an almost automatic photo stop for anyone passing by.

The storks of Chellah continue to return each year to the same ruined minarets, indifferent to the fact that royal power moved elsewhere in the city many centuries ago.

The best time to enjoy it is late afternoon, when the white and blue walls of the Kasbah light up with golden light and fishermen return to the mouth of the river with boats full from the day's catch.