Bab Bou Jeloud

Before arriving in Fès, I was studying the map and general layout of the historic city. This one seems much larger than Chefchaoen by several magnitudes. I was thinking that if Google Maps was next to useless in Chefchaoen, it would be even more so here in Fès. At that time, I didn’t know where the bus from Chefchaoen would drop me off. Fortunately, it dropped me off a bus station beside the medina. This made getting to the medina much easier. I was fearing that I would be dropped off at the modern city and I would need to get a cab to get to the medina. The medina has numerous entry points and most of them don’t even show up in Google Maps. But perhaps the most prominent entry point is the Bab Bou Jeloud, it is also called the Blue Gate.

As the English name says, it is the blue gate. The gate is a three arch gate with the middle one much larger than the other two presumably to allow larger vehicles in. Not that they would get very far once inside. The name blue gate is probably just a modern name because that is the name which most foreigners would understand. Confusingly, the back of the gate is actually green. The blue side is the one you see when you are entering the medina. The Bab Bou Jeloud lead directly to what appears to the the main artery of the medina. Once you are inside, you may never find your way back out.

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