It is on the list for two cities at once.

01 A name that explains everything

That double recognition describes precisely what you see on arriving. Rabat is not a medina with suburbs around it, nor a modern city with an old core inside. They are two complete layouts, of opposite logics, that grew seven centuries apart and today share a border along several streets.

The city sits at the mouth of the Bou Regreg river, on the south bank, with Salé opposite. That site — a spur above the estuary, with the Atlantic to the west — is what orders everything: the first enclosure was placed where it commands the river bar, and the rest was added inland.

02 The walls of 1197

The first city is twelfth-century. The Almohads raised a ribat here — a fortified enclosure — and the city's name comes from that word. The walls that define the historic core were finished in 1197 and still stand for kilometres, with their monumental gates intact.

They are built in rammed earth, the technique that gives the curtains that uniform ochre colour and that smooth, slightly eroded surface. They are not a preserved fragment inside a park: they are walls several metres high running through the city, with traffic passing on one side and pedestrians on the other.

The oldest quarter still standing is the Kasbah of the Udayas, perched on the spur commanding the river mouth. It is a maze of narrow streets with houses whitewashed in white and blue, inside its own stone enclosure, and from its terrace you see at once the river, Salé opposite and the open Atlantic.

03 The 1913 extension

The second city has a date and an author. In 1912 Rabat became the country's administrative capital in place of Fez, and in 1913 Henri Prost was commissioned to lay out the Ville Nouvelle: an administrative extension designed from scratch, beside the old enclosure but without touching it.

That criterion — growing beside rather than on top — is what makes the case singular. In many capitals of the same period, expansion was carried out by demolishing part of the historic fabric. Here a new plan was drawn on the free ground next door, and the result is that both cities reached the present intact.

The extension's architecture deserves attention in its own right: wide tree-lined avenues, regular blocks and buildings mixing art nouveau, art deco and a neo-Moorish repertoire of arches and lattices. It is a fairly complete catalogue of the early twentieth century, built in one go and to a unified criterion.

04 How it is covered

The route that works best is the one following the seam between the two cities. You walk beside the wall, with the rammed-earth curtain on one side and the extension's façades on the other, and cross into the old enclosure through one of the monumental gates. In a short walk you go from 1197 to 1913.

And a third stop is worth adding, south of the core: the Chellah enclosure, where the remains of a Roman city lie beneath a medieval wall. Added to the rest, the city offers four built layers legible in a single day, something uncommon even among far larger capitals.

On the calendar: the city has around 515,600 inhabitants, with some 2.1 million in the metropolitan area, and is walkable without strain. The best moment is spring or early autumn: in July 0.4 millimetres of rain fall and in August 0.6, but those are also the months when the heat can spike.