The Mendoubia Gardens are a green public park at the heart of Tangier, reached through an archway off the Grand Socco. The grounds surround the historic Mendoubia building, once a German consulate and later the residence of the Mendoub, the Sultan's representative during the international-zone era. The park is known for its towering old fig and banyan trees, one famously said to be centuries old, and for a monument bearing the text of Sultan Mohammed V's 1947 Tangier Speech.