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Bab Mansour Review
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Bab Mansour
- Address: Rue Dar Smen s/n, Meknes
- Category: Architectural Sites
- Location: Meknes
Fodor's Review:
Widely considered North Africa's most beautiful gate, this mammoth, horseshoe-shape triumphal arch was completed in 1732 by a Christian convert to Islam named Mansour Laalej (whose name means "victorious renegade"). The famous and much-repeated story of the gate's construction -- sultan Moulay Ismail asked, "Can you do better?" to which Mansour replied in the affirmative and was immediately executed -- is surely a legend, as the gate was finished five years after Ismail's death. The smaller marble columns supporting the two bastions on either side of the main entry were taken from the Roman ruins at Volubilis, while the taller Corinthian columns came from Marrakesh's El Badi Palace, part of Moulay Ismail's campaign to erase any vestige of the Saadian dynasty that preceded the Alaouites. Ismail's last important construction project, the gate was conceived as an elaborate homage to himself rather than (for once) a defensive stronghold, thus its intensely decorative character.
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- From JFK to Fez, Morocco
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