02 · GALLERY
Five frames.
Bab Al Makina is a stone amphitheatre cut into the old royal palace walls. At dusk the muezzin sounds across the medina and a few minutes later the first qanun strikes from inside. The audience sits on long wooden benches, knee to knee with French and Senegalese pilgrims; the air is heavy with mint and woodsmoke from the souk a hundred metres away. The Sufi nights run past midnight, the dervishes turning in tight white columns until the floor of the stage seems to soften.
Buy Bab Al Makina night tickets, then walk in for the free Sufi nights at Dar Tazi. The Volubilis side concert is the deepest catch.
Architectural plus sacred plus medina, with a Roman ruins outpost. The single richest beautiful-music-in-a-beautiful-place offer in North Africa.
First two weeks of June. Bab al-Makina open-air evening programme is the headline (typically 21:00 each night). The smaller Batha Museum Andalusian-garden afternoon programme is the secret pick: free, intimate, world-class.
Annual, ten days early June. Main stage at Bab al-Makina nightly 21:00 to 23:30. Daytime programmes at Batha Museum, Jnan Sbil gardens, and the medina from 16:00.
Fly Fes (FEZ) direct or via Casablanca. From the medina walk to Bab al-Makina via Bab Boujloud and the Talaa Kebira street, 20 minutes. Bab al-Makina is at the south-east corner of the medina, visible from a kilometre.