Volubilis

Volubilis stands near modern Meknes in Morocco, a Berber settlement founded around the third century BC that grew into a substantial Roman city after major expansion beginning in the first century AD, and it is thought to have served as the capital of the Kingdom of Mauretania, particularly under King Juba II. Its surviving monuments include the Arch of Caracalla, a triumphal arch dated to 217 AD, along with a basilica, a Capitoline temple, an aqueduct, public baths and defensive walls running some 2.6 kilometers around the settlement. Several of the city's grand houses preserve exceptionally fine Roman mosaic floors still in place, including the House of Orpheus, the House of Venus and the House of the Knight, offering a rare, largely intact record of domestic Roman decorative art on the edge of the empire. The city reached a peak population of roughly 20,000 people in the late second century AD, then declined and was ultimately abandoned by the eleventh century as the region's political center shifted to Fes. UNESCO inscribed Volubilis as a World Heritage Site in 1997, describing it as an exceptionally well preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the empire.