The Blue Gate

The most photographed gate in Morocco was built in 1913 by the French.

Bab Boujloud is the main ceremonial entrance to the Fes el-Bali medina, and every guidebook uses it as the cover image. Horseshoe arches framed in blue zellige tiles, flanked by two towers, with the minaret of the Bou Inania Madrasa rising behind it. The blue is the colour of Fes — the city that claims blue the way Marrakech claims red.

But the gate is not old. Not by Fes standards. The original Bab Boujloud was a simple defensive gate in the city wall, built centuries earlier. In 1913, early in the French Protectorate, it was demolished and replaced with the current structure — a decorative archway designed to look Moorish and photograph well. The French were building a new entrance to the old city, one that matched the image they were constructing of Morocco as an exotic but orderly protectorate.

The blue tiles on the exterior face the city outside the medina. On the inside — the face you see when leaving the medina — the tiles are green, the colour of Islam. Two faces for two directions.

The gate opens onto Talaa Kebira, the main descending street into the medina, and Talaa Seghira, the smaller parallel street. Both drop steeply into the oldest continuously inhabited urban area in the world. From the gate you can see the Bou Inania minaret, hear the copperworkers of Place Seffarine, and smell the tanneries if the wind is right.

Every visitor to Fes passes through this gate. Most photograph it without knowing they are photographing a French colonial addition to a medieval city. The irony would have pleased Lyautey, who believed the best way to govern Morocco was to frame it beautifully and leave the interior untouched.