Madrasa Ben Youssef

The Ben Youssef Madrasa features a central courtyard paved in white marble, enclosed by walls covered in intricate, honeycomb-like wood carvings and colorful geometric tilework. Founded in the fourteenth century, this school once housed nine hundred students who studied theology and law in small, spartan cells clustered around the upper galleries. Sultan Abu al-Hasan ordered the initial construction, but the current layout dates to the sixteen hundreds. Students lived here until nineteen sixty, when the building transitioned into a historic monument.