17 May 2023, Fes
Maison du Lac R495 [DH260]

After three days of being too lazy to leave the apartment except to stock up on food and buy commemorative stamps, we decided today would be the day on which to visit the medina proper. There are two medinas. We have spent time in the one outside our door, not the Unesco heritage site a ten minute walk from our door. We awoke to rain, but by 1300 it had stopped and held off until we were walking home a little after 1700.
We visited a few sites (listed below), and strolled the streets, and ate Chinese for a welcome change.
The Bab Boujloud gate was built by the French in 1913 beside the more modest original which dates from the 12th century.
The weight-powered water clock* dates from the 14th century. It is only partially restored as no-one seems to know exactly how it worked. "The building is also sometimes referred to as the House of Maimonidas due to a popular legend which claims that the house was once the residence of the famous Jewish philosopher..."
Restaurant Palais Lahlou allowed us in just to take photos of its extraordinary interior.
The Moulay Idriss mausoleum is visited by circling it via the narrow alleys that encase it, the external decorations of carved wood and stucco are simply lovely.
And we peered through a couple of doors into portions of the "oldest existing and continually operating educational institution in the world... founded in 859...", the University of al-Qarawiyyin.
A great day...
*The clock consists of 12 windows and platforms carrying brass bowls. The motion of the clock was presumably maintained by a kind of small cart which ran from left to right behind the twelve doors. At one end, the cart was attached to a rope with a hanging weight; at the other end to a rope with a weight that floated on the surface of a water reservoir that was drained at a regular pace. Each hour one of the doors opened; at the same time a metal ball was dropped into one of the twelve brass bowls. The rafters sticking out of the building above the doors supported a small roof to shield the doors and bowls. The facade of the building is decorated with carved stucco around the windows and by sculpted arabesque and epigraphic motifs on the wooden rafters and corbels.