Ouadane

Ouadane is much the emptiest of the four inscribed caravan towns, a stone ksar stacked up a hillside above a palm valley and abandoned almost entirely in favour of a small modern settlement alongside it. Walking the old town here means climbing through roofless rooms and up lanes that end in rubble, with the open desert visible through almost every doorway. A ruined mosque minaret still stands at the very top. The famous ringed structure in the desert north of here reads only as a set of low ridges from the ground and resolves properly from orbit.