Koutoubia

This guide to the Koutoubia in Marrakesh opens with a caliph, Abd al-Mu'min, tearing down his own newly finished mosque after discovering it faced the wrong way for prayer, and raising a second one beside it around 1158. It follows the decades-long construction of the minaret that replaced it, completed under Yaqub al-Mansur, and the three copper spheres crowning its tip that locals have long claimed are solid gold. Look up at those spheres for yourself — nobody has ever climbed up to check.