Volubilis
— — the mosaics the dry country kept.
Not only on a wall.
“A Roman city in the foothills of the Middle Atlas, abandoned, then half-buried, then slowly read back out of the ground. Volubilis was the western edge of the empire, a working town of olive presses and merchant houses with mosaic floors still legible where they lie. The triumphal arch raised for Caracalla in 217 frames the long axis of the Decumanus Maximus. Storks nest on the basilica columns. From the ridge, the olive groves run all the way to Meknes. — from the studio
Volubilis, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Volubilis sits on a fertile plain at the foot of Jebel Zerhoun, about 33 kilometres north of Meknes and 4 kilometres from the pilgrimage town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun. The site covers roughly 42 hectares of an originally larger Roman city that served as the administrative centre of the province of Mauretania Tingitana from the 1st century AD. Inhabited from the late 3rd century BC and abandoned in stages after the 11th century, Volubilis was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 for its exceptionally well-preserved domestic architecture and mosaic floors.
The visible monuments cluster along a single paved axis. The basilica, completed under Macrinus around 217, still raises a row of broken columns above the forum. The triumphal arch of Caracalla, dedicated the same year by the procurator Marcus Aurelius Sebastenus, marks the western end of the Decumanus Maximus. Beyond it, the city's wealthy merchant quarter preserves the mosaic floors that give Volubilis its reputation: the House of Orpheus, the House of the Labours of Hercules, the House of Dionysus and the Four Seasons, all named for the figures still legible in their pavement.
The site reads differently across the day. Most coach tours arrive between 10 and 14:00 from Fez and Meknes, when the limestone is bleached and the mosaics show flat. Late afternoon, the columns of the basilica throw long shadows down the Decumanus and the carved drums turn the colour of old honey. Storks (Ciconia ciconia) nest on the basilica capitals from late winter through summer. The site is officially open from 09:00 to sunset; an on-site museum near the entrance, opened in 2017, holds a selection of the smaller mosaics and bronzes.