French Protectorate Residence, Rabat

[2] It dominates grounds that were subsequently allocated for the protectorate's central administrative services, now Rabat's governmental quarter (French: Quartier des Ministères), and further west, the Dar al-Makhzen royal palace.

[4] It blends modern design concepts and French references such as André Le Nôtre with Moorish Revival architecture, partly inspired by the Generalife in Granada and including a copy of the fountain at Funduq al-Najjarin in Fez.

[5] On 8 December 1942, a month after the Allied invasion of Morocco as part of Operation Torch, U.S. Major General George S. Patton visited the Residence and was received with military honors by Resident-general Charles Noguès.

In the 1970s, France and Morocco negotiated a series of real estate agreements, one on 30 October 1975 to build a new embassy on a less central location in Western Rabat, and another on 6 March 1979 to finalize the transfer of the residence and other French properties to the Moroccan state.

After resigning from the position of Resident-general in 1925, Lyautey planned for his own burial in Rabat and in 1933 requested painter Joseph de La Nézière to produce a sketch for his mausoleum as a traditional Muslim Qubba.

Reflecting those misgivings, Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco declined to attend the funeral on the Residence grounds on 31 October 1935, when Lyautey's remains were eventually placed in the completed mausoleum, even though he participated in a ceremony earlier the same day at Bab er-Rouah in downtown Rabat.

[15] Following Moroccan independence, French President Charles de Gaulle and Mohammed V, by then the King of Morocco, agreed to preempt the risk of incidents around the still controversial mausoleum and to repatriate Lyautey's remains, which were ceremoniously removed on 22 April 1961 and shipped to France via Casablanca.

There, his remains lie in an ornamented casket designed by Albert Laprade, the Residence's original architect almost a half-century earlier, and made by celebrated art deco metalworker Raymond Subes [fr].