Cabin Fever Chronicles – Getting Outdoors with Rod

Standing in front of Corinthian columns.

After lunch, we drove out to Volubilis. This ancient Roman city is the finest archeological site in Morocco. At its peak in the 2nd Century A.D., it spread out over 100 acres and had a population estimated at 20,000. What we see today looks to be Roman, but that belies the many waves of kingdoms and cultures that made this city home. It is often referred to as a Berber city as well.

Before the Romans, it was founded in the 2nd Century B.C. as the capital of Mauritania. It became a Roman client state in the 1st Century B.C. and then was annexed by Rome in 44 A.D. And after the Romans, in 787, it became the capital of Idris I, the first king of the Idrisid dynasty. Eventually it fell back into local tribal ownership. It was continuously populated under various rulers until the 1755 Great Lisbon Earthquake leveled it, along with many cities and towns in southern Europe and North Africa.

Volubilis enjoys status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to the numerous cultures that lived here. For over 1,000 years, it was inhabited by Berbers, Arabs, Romans, Mauretanians, Libyans, Jews, Moors, as well as Aftrican and Christian cultures. Archeologists have unearthed evidence of all these cultures.

When we arrived the day had turned dry, warm and bright. The city sits on a hillside and has an uninterrupted view of the surrounding area. Wending our way through the ruins, the extent of the city became apparent. There were baths, rest rooms, an industrial size olive press, elaborate halls, a sewer under the main street, and intricate tile floors depicting elements of daily life, as well as tales of the Gods and Hercules.

I hadn’t been to a Roman ruin since 1983

You can spend hours exploring

Arch of Caracalla (Triumphant Arch)

I could imagine all the hustle bustle

View of the valley beyond

Another reason this city was selected as a World Heritage site is its integrity. After 1755, it was essentially abandoned and left alone. So what the architects found was as pristine as it had been for centuries.

Corinthian columns have a “flower-like” top

Iambic columns have a “rolled paper-ish” top

Penny and her dad Craig

All three types of columns were evident – Doric, Iambic and Corinthian. Corinthian are more fancy and detailed at the the top. For Iambic, the top looks like a a sheet of paper with rolls on either end. Doric are the simplest, with the top kind of looking like a chopped off inverted pyramid (I don’t have images for those).

Many of the structures contained elaborate tile floors depicting images of gods, stories of the gods, and pictures of animals.

Not sure what’s going on, but there is a man, horse, and I think lion

Here, a man riding a horse backwards

Hercules wrestling snakes

A swastika, important in Hindu beliefs.

Sea life

Lions and others

Hercules wrestling a creature I can’t ID

Face of Hercules

? Use your imagination.

The mosaics even contained evidence of just how far away influence had come. There was a swastika – a religious icon of divinity and spirituality from Hinduism.

The size, history and significance of Volubilis was a lot to comprehend. We had time in the bus to consider, as our destination for the night was Fez.