Courtyard at Bahia Palace
The Bahia Palace is one of the historical sites within the Medina of Marrakesh. I managed to find it after some initial confusion. Apparently, the Bahia Palace isn’t one of those centuries old structure. It is quite old but not five hundred years old. The main figure behind the Bahia Palace is Ahmed Ben Moussa who was grand vizier at the time. He used the Bahia Palace for his personal use. As you can tell, Ahmed Ben Moussa is a powerful man, you can say that he is a king maker, or more accurately, a sultan maker. He made his nephew the sultan but the nephew was still a child so he was still in control of things.
Windows at the Bahia Palace
The Bahia Palace was used for personal and even official business. Because of this, you can see different areas of the palace which have different functions. Unsurprisingly, one of these places is called the small riad. A riad is basically a guest house. It features an impressively designed, open courtyard. The windows and fixtures were all Islamic and Moroccan design. For me, the most impressive is the stucco decorations which can be found just below the roofs. The palace was designed to impress and I’m pretty sure that a lot of people would have been impressed here.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/BahiaPalace.kmz} zoom=19]