Chambre de la Favorite (Room of the Favorite)
The room takes its name from Bahiya — 'the beautiful, the brilliant' — the favorite among the wives of Grand Vizier Bou Ahmed, who shaped this palace into one of the most elaborately decorated private residences in 19th-century Morocco. It sits within a complex of roughly 150 rooms organized around courtyards and riad gardens, and like much of Bahia Palace, it rewards close attention: painted wood ceilings worked in zouak, sculpted stucco, and zellij tilework that runs floor to dado in geometric patterns.
The room itself is one piece of a larger story about power, domesticity, and craft. Bou Ahmed built and expanded this palace to house four wives and 24 concubines, and the Chambre de la Favorite reflects the particular care he took with the private quarters — more intimate in scale than the grand marble courtyard, but no less considered in its decoration.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who return tend to come early, when the light through the courtyard is softer and the crowds haven't yet thickened. They also note that the painted ceilings repay time spent looking up — bring your patience and, if the sun is high, a moment in the shade of the riad garden just outside.
How Chambre de la Favorite (Room of the Favorite) came to be
The palace began in the 1860s under Grand Vizier Si Moussa, himself descended from a family of enslaved people who had risen to the highest offices of the Moroccan royal government. Two chambers dating to 1866–67 survive from that first phase. His son Bou Ahmed — full name Ahmad ibn Musa — took over after engineering the smooth accession of the young Sultan Abdelaziz in 1894 and, as the sultan's effective regent, poured resources into expanding the complex. The architect Muhammad ibn Makki al-Misfiwi, originally from Safi, oversaw the embellishments between 1894 and 1900.
Bou Ahmed died of disease in 1900. The palace passed through the hands of Pasha Glaoui and then the French Protectorate's resident-general before becoming a royal residence after Moroccan independence in 1956. King Hassan II eventually transferred it to the Ministry of Culture.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Spring (March to May) and autumn (late September to November) are the most comfortable seasons, with daytime temperatures between roughly 20°C and 30°C. Summer heat regularly reaches 35–40°C, which makes the shaded interior rooms a genuine relief.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.