Tucked away in the top end of the centre ville, this undervisited and underfunded museum is nonetheless Morocco’s most important. Two floors and a separate annex house exhibits displaying the full ancient history of Morocco, from prehistoric times to the stone age, and beyond to Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman times.
The undoubted highlight is the Salle des Bronzes, housed in the separate annex. Here is a fascinating collection of Roman-era ceramics and artifacts — procured largely from excavations of the Volubilis ruins near Meknes — dating back to the first and second centuries A.D. The bronzes include evocatively named pieces such as “Drunken Donkey,” “Volubilis Dog,” “Young Man Crowned with Ivy,” which is said to be that of Cato the Younger, and “Heads of Young Berbers,” as well as a beautiful, realistic bust reputed to be that of Juba II, the Romanized Berber Mauretanian king and son-in-law to Cleopatra and Marc Antony. The exhibits are explained only in Arabic and French, but a visit is still worthwhile purely on aesthetic grounds.