Park Arsat Moulay Abdesalam

Park Arsat Moulay Abdesalam runs along Avenue Mohammed V, hemmed on the other side by the Medina ramparts, a few hundred metres from Jemaa el-Fna and across from the town hall. It is eight hectares of old garden, and it is genuinely old: a prince laid it out in the eighteenth century, Moulay Abdeslam, son of Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah, a diplomat, poet and adviser to the sultan. The estate became a public garden at the start of the twentieth century, and a second garden was added around 1920. By the end of the century it had been left to itself. The restoration came in 2005, seventeen months of work driven by the royal foundation for the environment and paid for by Maroc Telecom with fourteen other companies: 450 trees pruned, then 200 palms, 500 shrubs and 680 orange and lemon trees planted, the paths and the open-air amphitheatre rebuilt. The same project gave the garden its second name, the Cyber Parc, by wiring all eight hectares for free internet, which is still there and still used. What it offers is not what Majorelle or the Ménara offer. This is a local park: families in the evening, school groups in the morning, students on the benches under the olives, no ticket booth and no queue. Come in the cooler hours, when the birds are louder than the avenue.