Ben Youssef Mosque

The Ben Youssef Mosque is the largest and one of the oldest mosques of the Marrakesh medina, standing at the historic heart of the old city beside the celebrated madrasa that shares its name. Its origins reach back to the Almoravid period, and it is named for the twelfth-century sultan Ali ibn Yusuf, though the building has been rebuilt several times, most recently in a nineteenth-century form.

The mosque was long the religious anchor of the medina. Around it grew a whole quarter of learning and commerce, including the great Ben Youssef Madrasa, once the largest Islamic college in North Africa, and the small Almoravid Koubba, a rare surviving fragment of the city's earliest architecture. Together these form a compact cluster of monuments at the medina's core.

For non-Muslim visitors the mosque itself is off-limits inside, but its scale, minaret and surroundings are well worth seeing, and the neighbouring madrasa, open to all, offers an unforgettable interior of carved cedar, stucco and zellij tilework that hints at the artistry lavished on the wider complex.

The location makes it an ideal orientation point. From here the souks spread west toward the great square of Jemaa el-Fnaa, while quieter residential lanes run east and north, so the mosque marks a useful hinge in any walking route through the old town. Dress modestly in keeping with the religious setting, come earlier in the day before the madrasa and souks fill with visitors, and combine the stop with the Koubba and the museum housed in a nearby former palace. Standing at this crossroads of faith, scholarship and trade, you get a clear sense of how the medieval medina was organised around its central mosque.