Architecture
The mosque is made of red stone, formerly plastered, and has six rooms in succession, one above the other. It was designed so as to prevent anyone gazing in from the minaret to the harems of the king. Even in the modern day, such restrictions are enforced by blocking Google Earth access to Moroccans. Architectural details of the old mosque and the new mosque are identical except for the orientation. Hence, what is true of one holds true for the other, though the first mosque is now derelict. It is designed in a traditional Almohad style and the tower is adorned with copper globes.
Read more about this topic: Koutoubia Mosque
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)