El Badi Palace Marrakech: Ruins of a 16th-Century Fortress

What Is El Badi Palace Today?

El Badi Palace is the ruined open-air shell of what was once described as one of the most opulent palaces in the world. It sits at the heart of the Kasbah quarter, a five-minute walk from the Saadian Tombs and ten minutes from Jemaa el-Fna. The name El Badi means 'The Incomparable' — one of the 99 names of God in Islam, and a deliberately bold choice by the sultan who built it.

What you see today is a vast walled enclosure measuring roughly 135 metres by 110 metres, with a wide central courtyard, four sunken orange-tree gardens, and the foundations of long-gone reception pavilions on each side. The original decoration — gold leaf, turquoise, Indian onyx, Sudanese ivory and Italian Carrara marble — is almost entirely gone. What remains is the immense ochre framework: high ramparts you can climb, underground chambers (khalwa) used by the palace's hidden quarters, and a colony of storks nesting on the walls from spring through summer.

Inside the complex, a small dedicated pavilion houses the original 12th-century Koutoubia minbar, one of the masterpieces of medieval Islamic woodwork. El Badi is also one of the main outdoor venues for the Marrakech Popular Arts Festival in July. Tickets are 70 MAD and the visit is essentially open-air — bring water and sun protection in the warmer months.

How a Battle Built the Palace

El Badi owes its existence to a single dramatic event: the Battle of the Three Kings (also called the Battle of Wadi al-Makhazin or Battle of El Ksar el-Kebir) in 1578, in which the young Saadi sultan Ahmad al-Mansur defeated a Portuguese invasion force. Three rulers died in the fighting, including the Portuguese king, and al-Mansur emerged with both the throne and a vast Portuguese ransom. He commissioned the new palace within months.

Construction was funded on a colossal scale. In 1591 al-Mansur sent armies across the Sahara to conquer the Songhai Empire and seize Timbuktu, capturing gold mines that earned him the epithet 'al-Dhahabi' — 'the Golden'. According to the court chronicler al-Fishtali, Carrara marble was reportedly traded weight-for-weight against Moroccan sugar, which the Saadi state controlled. Construction lasted around 25 years, from 1578 to about 1603, and the finished palace is said to have contained 360 rooms.

The glory was short-lived. After the Saadi dynasty collapsed in the 17th century, the Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail spent 12 years from 1696 systematically stripping the palace. Every door, ceiling, marble column and gold-leaf panel was carried north to dress his new imperial capital at Meknes. By the early 18th century only the brick shell remained, and the orange gardens slowly went wild. Modern conservation began in the 20th century, leaving the ruin you see today.

Inside the Vanished Splendor

The plan still reads clearly even in ruin. A single great courtyard, roughly 135 by 110 metres, holds four sunken orange gardens set about three metres below the central paved level. The gardens were watered through underground khettara qanats, gravity-fed channels that brought water from the Atlas foothills and still partly function today. Long rectangular reflecting pools — including a 90-metre central basin — mirrored the four pavilions arranged around the courtyard.

Each pavilion was a small palace in itself. The most famous, the Koubba el-Khamsiniya or Pavilion of the Fifty Columns, took its name from a forest of marble columns supporting a domed ceiling. Opposite stood the Crystal Pavilion, named for its rock-crystal inlays, and the Green Pavilion, which gave its name to the green-tile roofs visible from the ramparts. On the eastern side rose the Heri (or Khaisuran), a long gold-leafed reception hall where al-Mansur received ambassadors.

The original materials read like a manifesto of the Saadi gold-trade era: Italian Carrara marble, gold leaf, Indian onyx, turquoise glazed tile, Sudanese ivory, and locally carved cedar. Almost none of it survives — and that absence is part of the experience. You walk through bare ochre walls and imagine, with the help of the small interpretive plaques, the layers of luxury Moulay Ismail removed.

Beneath the central courtyard, a network of underground chambers (khalwa) served as storerooms, dungeons and discreet quarters for the women of the palace, separate from the public ceremonial spaces above. Today these basements are open to visitors via uneven stone stairs.

The Star Exhibit

In a small dedicated room near the entrance stands the original Koutoubia minbar — the carved wooden pulpit commissioned in 1137 for the Almoravid emir Ali ibn Yusuf and made in the workshops of Cordoba, then under Almoravid rule. It was later moved to the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech, where it was used for Friday sermons for almost 800 years before being retired here for conservation.

The minbar is widely considered one of the great masterpieces of medieval Islamic woodwork. Its triangular flank is composed of around 1,000 pieces of cedar, ebony, boxwood and jujube wood, inlaid with bone, ivory and silver in a marquetry pattern of interlocking eight-pointed stars and Kufic calligraphy. The level of craftsmanship has been compared to the most refined work produced anywhere in the medieval Mediterranean.

The display is well-lit and you can walk around three sides of the piece. Take 10–15 minutes here — easy to overlook in a hurry, and arguably the single most precious object on the El Badi ticket.

Tickets, Hours, and What to Bring

Entry: 70 MAD for foreign visitors (about 7 EUR) in 2026, with reduced rates of around 30 MAD for Moroccan residents and students. The ticket covers the courtyard, all four ruined pavilions, the underground chambers, the rampart walk and the Koutoubia minbar exhibit.

Hours: Open daily 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry around 16:30. Hours are typically reduced during Ramadan (commonly 9:00–15:30). There is no weekly closing day.

How long: Allow 1.5 to 2 hours — the site is much larger than it first appears once you start climbing the ramparts and exploring the basements. Photographers can easily fill three hours.

What to bring: The palace is almost entirely open-air with very little shade. Carry water, a sun hat and sunscreen in summer; a light layer for the cool basements in winter. Wear shoes with grip — the ramparts have uneven stones and there are no railings on the stair edges.

Storks: The famous nesting storks live on the rampart tops year-round. Their breeding and chick-rearing season runs roughly March through June, when nests are full and the most photogenic. You'll hear their clattering bills long before you see them.

Festivals: The Marrakech Popular Arts Festival uses the central courtyard for evening concerts each July; the Marrakech du Rire comedy festival often books the site in June. During these weeks, sections of the palace may close from late afternoon for setup.

Best Time and How to Photograph

Morning before 11:00 is the clear winner. The light is even, the air is still cool and the storks tend to be active on the nests. Tour groups generally arrive after 11:00, on a circuit linking Bahia Palace and the Saadian Tombs.

Golden hour (around 17:00 in winter, later in summer when hours stretch) is the best time for the sunken orange gardens — warm light pools at the base of the high walls and the storks are silhouetted on the ramparts. Avoid the noon hours from May through September; the brick walls reflect heat and there is genuinely nowhere to hide.

The ramparts: Climbing the walls is the highlight for many visitors. The staircases are narrow, steep and unrailed, so go slowly and watch your footing. The view sweeps across the Mellah and the Saadian Tombs, with the Atlas Mountains visible on clear winter mornings. If you have vertigo, the underground chambers and central courtyard alone are still worth the visit.

Photography: The best wide-angle is from the top of the eastern rampart, looking across the orange gardens with the Koutoubia minaret in the distance. For storks, a 200–300mm lens is enough; you don't need to get close.

Accessibility: The central courtyard is mostly flat and reachable, but neither the ramparts nor the underground chambers are wheelchair accessible.

A Kasbah Walking Loop

El Badi is the natural anchor of a half-day walking circuit through the Kasbah quarter — almost everything within 15 minutes on foot.

Saadian Tombs — about 5 minutes on foot via Bab Berrima square. Sealed up by Moulay Ismail in the 17th century and only rediscovered in 1917, the tombs are some of the finest carved spaces in Morocco. 70 MAD entry, often a small queue.

Bab Agnaou — about 5 minutes west, on the way to the Saadian Tombs. Free, no ticket needed. The 12th-century stone gate is the finest of the original Almohad gates of Marrakech.

Place des Ferblantiers and the Mellah — about 10 minutes east. The old Jewish quarter, with the Lazama Synagogue still active for Shabbat, and the lantern-makers' square just outside its walls.

Bahia Palace — about 12 minutes east. The late 19th-century vizier's palace makes the perfect counterpart to El Badi: an intact, fully decorated palace that helps you visualise what El Badi might once have looked like inside.

Koutoubia Mosque — about 15 minutes north along Rue de la Kasbah. The original setting of the Koutoubia minbar before it was moved to El Badi for conservation.

A taxi drop-off at Place des Ferblantiers puts you within five minutes of the palace gate. See the full list of places to visit in Marrakech for a wider plan.