Marrakesh: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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In 2001 Unesco declared Jemaa el-Fnaa a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity — and the category itself was created largely because of a campaign to protect this square, led by the writer Juan Goytisolo, who argued that what mattered here was not buildings but practices: storytellers, musicians, herbalists, water sellers. That was the first listing of its kind in the world. The square is almost empty at four in the afternoon and completely full by eight, and this walk only works in that order. Two and a half hours, and the medina lanes have no street signs.

A short history of Marrakesh

In 1070 the Almoravids, a Berber tribe from the Sahara, founded Marrakesh as a military camp, and it became the capital of a kingdom that stretched as far as Spain. The name Morocco is derived from its name. In the 12th century the Almohads, who conquered the city, built the Koutoubia Mosque, whose 77-metre minaret still dominates the skyline. In the 16th century it was the capital of the Saadian dynasty, and in this period the Mellah, the Jewish quarter, was built next to the ruler's palace. In 1912 Morocco came under a French protectorate. In 1985 the medina was declared a World Heritage Site.

The ten best sights in Marrakesh

1
Jemaa el-Fnaa
Free, empty at four and full at eight, and the food stalls set up at six
2
Koutoubia Mosque
From outside only, the minaret is 77 metres, and nothing in the medina is taller
3
Ben Youssef Madrasa
From 50 dirhams, 130 student cells, and it reopened in 2022
4
Almoravid Koubba
From 20 dirhams, from 1117, and it is the oldest building in the city
5
Bahia Palace
From 70 dirhams, 150 rooms, and go at nine before the groups
6
El Badi Palace
From 70 dirhams, a stripped ruin, and storks nest on the walls
7
Saadian Tombs
From 70 dirhams, sealed for three centuries, and found again in 1917
8
Dar Si Said
From 30 dirhams, the woodwork and carpet museum, and nearly empty
9
Marrakesh Museum
From 50 dirhams, in a 19th-century palace, and the courtyard is the exhibit
10
Dar El Bacha
From 60 dirhams, the pasha’s house, and the café inside is a separate pleasure

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A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Marrakesh:

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The square, and why it is protected

Koutoubia Mosque · The minaret is seventy-seven metres and no building in the medina may be taller — a rule still enforced. Its name comes from the kutubiyyin, the booksellers, about a hundred of whom had stalls at its foot. The same dynasty, the Almohads, built two near-copies of this minaret: the Giralda in Seville and the unfinished Hassan Tower in Rabat, so the three cities share one tower design across two continents.
Jemaa el-Fnaa · The name probably means the assembly of the dead, and it is thought to refer to public executions held here. The square has no fixed function: by day it is juice carts and henna, by six it is a hundred numbered food stalls that are built and dismantled daily, and by nine it is music. The storytellers, the hlaiqia, are down to a handful, and that is exactly what the Unesco listing was meant to prevent.
Souk Semmarine · The souks north of the square are organised by trade, not by product for sale — ironworkers in one lane, dyers in another, leather in a third — because that is how the guilds were laid out, and a trade stayed where its guild was. The practical consequence is that if you want a lamp you should walk to the noise, and the first price asked is roughly three times the last.
Souk des Teinturiers · The dyers’ lane, where skeins of wool are hung across the alley to dry, so the colour overhead changes from week to week depending on what has been ordered. The dyes were traditionally mineral and plant: indigo, poppy for red, mint for green, saffron for yellow. Several workshops still use them, and the dyers’ hands are the colour of the week.
Ben Youssef Madrasa · Built in 1565 and it housed up to nine hundred students in a hundred and thirty cells, some of them windowless and barely two metres across. It was a religious college until 1960. What is worth standing still for is the central courtyard: every surface is worked — carved cedar above, stucco in the middle, zellij tile below — and there is not one representation of a living thing anywhere in it.
Almoravid Koubba · A small domed ablution building from about 1117, and it is the only Almoravid structure left in Marrakesh — everything else the founding dynasty built was demolished by the Almohads who took the city in 1147. It was found in 1948, buried under later buildings, and the motifs carved inside its dome are the originals that every later Moroccan building copied.

Palaces, and what was done to them

Marrakesh has been the capital three times and lost it three times, and the palaces record that cycle precisely: one was stripped to the bare walls twelve years after it was built, another was dismantled over twelve years to build a rival capital, and a third was emptied of its furniture within days of its owner’s death. The tombs that survived did so only because they were sealed up and forgotten for three hundred years. Two and a half hours, all in the southern medina, and the ticket offices close at five.

Bahia Palace · Built between 1859 and 1900 for a grand vizier called Ba Ahmed, who was born a slave and became the most powerful man in Morocco. The palace has no plan: he bought neighbouring houses as he could afford them and added rooms, which is why it rambles and why no two courtyards align. Within days of his death in 1900 the sultan’s men removed everything portable, and the rooms have stayed empty.
El Badi Palace · Finished in 1593 with three hundred and sixty rooms, Italian marble and gold leaf, paid for largely by the sugar trade and a ransom from Portugal. A century later Sultan Moulay Ismail had it dismantled to build his new capital at Meknes — the stripping took twelve years. What is left is the footprint, five sunken gardens and the walls, on which storks now nest; the nests are enormous and they are occupied.
Saadian Tombs · Moulay Ismail, who destroyed El Badi, would not destroy the graves of his predecessors — so he walled the complex up instead and left one tight passage through a mosque. It was effectively lost for about three centuries and was identified in 1917 from a French aerial survey. Sixty-six people are buried here, and the Hall of Twelve Columns is Carrara marble with a carved cedar ceiling.
Kasbah Mosque · From 1190, and it is the mosque of the royal quarter — which is why the Saadian tombs are immediately behind it and why the walled passage to them ran through its grounds. The green and white tiled band under the roofline is the Almohad pattern, and the same band appears on the Koutoubia a kilometre away.
Bab Agnaou · The ceremonial gate of the kasbah, from the 1180s, and it is the only one of the city’s twenty gates built of stone — all the others are rammed earth, which is why the walls are red and why they need constant repair. The gate was for the sultan and his court; everyone else used the earth gates.
Mellah · Established in 1558 and at its height it was one of the largest Jewish quarters in North Africa, with its own markets, courts and about forty synagogues. Almost the whole community left between 1948 and the 1970s; the Lazama synagogue is still in use, and the Miaara cemetery, which is sixteenth-century, is kept by a caretaker who will open the gate.

Water, gardens and the French town

Marrakesh is at the edge of a desert and the Atlas is thirty kilometres away, and the entire city exists because of a water technology: khettara, gently sloping underground tunnels that bring snowmelt from the mountains by gravity, dug by hand and ventilated by shafts. Hundreds of kilometres of them run under the palm grove. Everything in this walk — the twelfth-century basin, the 1920s painter’s garden, the French new town with its height limit — depends on that. Three hours with a taxi between the stops.

Menara Gardens · An olive grove around a large open basin, laid out in the twelfth century by the Almohads, and the basin is filled by khettara channels running from the Atlas thirty kilometres away. There is no pump anywhere in the system: the tunnels fall by about one metre in every two hundred, which is the whole engineering problem, solved by hand around the year 1150.
Jardin Majorelle · Jacques Majorelle, a French painter, began the garden in 1923 and spent forty years on it, and the intense blue he painted the buildings is a cobalt he mixed himself and registered — it is now called Majorelle blue. The garden was decaying and about to be sold for a hotel when Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé bought it in 1980; Saint Laurent’s ashes were scattered in the rose garden.
Musée Yves Saint Laurent · Opened in 2017 next door, and the building is the thing: the brick facade is laid in courses that read as warp and weft, so the wall looks like woven fabric, and the interior is smooth where the exterior is rough. Saint Laurent came here first in 1966 and afterwards designed two collections a year in Marrakesh for forty years.
Gueliz · The French laid out a new town here from 1913 under the planner Henri Prost, with a rule that mattered: no building in it could rise above the height of the palm trees, and the medina was to be left alone rather than cut through — which is why Marrakesh still has an intact medieval core while other colonial cities do not. The grid, the arcades and the wide boulevards are all his.
Le Jardin Secret · A riad garden in the middle of the medina that had been ruined for decades and was rebuilt as an exact reconstruction of a nineteenth-century four-part Islamic garden, including the original khettara-fed irrigation, which was dug out and put back into service. There is a tower you can climb for the only overhead view of the medina roofs.
Palmeraie · About a hundred thousand date palms north of the city, and the trees are not native — the story is that they grew from date stones spat out by Almoravid soldiers camped here in the eleventh century, which is unprovable but is what everyone says. The grove is irrigated entirely by khettara, and villa development has been eating it for thirty years.

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Getting to Marrakesh and getting around

Menara Airport · Six kilometres from the square, and the taxi fare should be agreed first
Marrakesh station · Three hours to Casablanca, and the high-speed line does not come this far
Bab Doukkala bus station · Buses to Essaouira and the Atlas villages, and they go when full

Cheap eats in Marrakesh

One dish here exists nowhere else: tanjia, which is beef or lamb with preserved lemon, cumin and saffron sealed in a clay urn and buried in the ashes of the neighbourhood hammam furnace for five to seven hours. It is traditionally cooked by men, on Fridays, and the hammam stoker is paid a few dirhams to watch it. The rest is Moroccan standard — harira soup, mechoui lamb carved off the shoulder, and babbouche, snail broth drunk from a bowl on the square. Thirty to sixty dirhams a plate, cash, and the square stalls have numbers.

Mechoui Alley · About 60 dirhams for two, cash, and it is finished by three
Chez Lamine · About 100 dirhams a head, and order tanjia a day ahead
Café des Épices · About 50 dirhams, three floors on the spice square, and the roof is the point
Nomad · About 180 dirhams a head, Moroccan reworked, and book for the roof
Terrasse des Épices · About 150 dirhams, an open roof in the souk, and live music at nine
Amal Women’s Centre · About 50 dirhams, lunch only, and closed Sunday
Dar Cherifa · About 120 dirhams, a 16th-century riad turned café, and hard to find
Jemaa el-Fnaa food stalls · 30 to 70 dirhams, from six in the evening, and the numbers on the stalls matter

Museums in Marrakesh

There is no single great museum here; there are about a dozen restored houses, and the house is usually the exhibit. The pattern is the same in all of them: a blank wall on the lane, one door, and behind it a courtyard with a fountain and rooms opening onto it — because in this architecture nothing faces the street and everything faces inward. Most close around five and several close one day a week.

Ben Youssef Madrasa · From 50 dirhams, and go at nine before the groups arrive
Dar Si Said · From 30 dirhams, nearly empty, and an hour is enough
Musée de Marrakech · From 50 dirhams, in the Menebhi palace, and the courtyard chandelier is enormous
Dar El Bacha · From 60 dirhams, closed Monday, and the café has its own queue
Maison de la Photographie · From 50 dirhams, and the roof café looks at the Koutoubia
Musée Yves Saint Laurent · From 100 dirhams, closed Wednesday, and the brick facade reads as woven cloth
Berber Museum · In the Majorelle ticket, jewellery by tribe, and the silver room is dark on purpose
Musée du Patrimoine · From 40 dirhams, in the kasbah, and almost nobody goes in

Nature and day trips near Marrakesh

The High Atlas starts thirty kilometres from the square and rises to four thousand one hundred and sixty-seven metres, which means Marrakesh has snow on its horizon for about five months a year and a ski lift seventy-five kilometres away. Between the city and the mountains are a stone desert, a reservoir, and valleys where Berber villages still farm terraces by hand. Almost everything here needs a car or a grand taxi, and in July the valleys are where the whole city goes.

Mount Toubkal · A guide is compulsory, two days, and crampons from November
Imlil · 65 kilometres out, the Toubkal trailhead, and mules are hired in the square
Oukaimeden · 75 kilometres out, and the petroglyphs are a short walk from the car park
Ourika Valley · 35 kilometres out, restaurants with tables in the river, and packed on Sunday
Setti Fatma · Seven waterfalls above the village, the first is 30 minutes up, and shoes with grip
Ouzoud Waterfalls · Two and a half hours out, free, and the macaques are not tame
Agafay desert · 30 kilometres out, a camp dinner is about 500 dirhams, and bring a coat
Lalla Takerkoust · 40 kilometres out, a 1930s French dam, and the lakeside places do lunch

Things to do in Marrakesh with kids

Jemaa el-Fnaa · Free, monkeys and snakes are there for money — say no and keep walking
Le Jardin Secret · From 100 dirhams, a tower to climb and water channels to follow, and shade
Cyber Park · Free, benches, trees and a playground, and it is the one quiet green in the centre
Ourika Valley · 35 kilometres out, tables in the shallow river, and paddling all afternoon
Lalla Takerkoust · 40 kilometres out, pedalos and a swim, and quiet on weekdays
Agafay camel ride · From 200 dirhams an hour, and the late-afternoon ride is the bearable one
Menara Gardens · Free, an olive grove with a big basin, and carp in the water
Palmeraie · Free to drive through, quad and camel places along the road, and agree the price

Holy places in Marrakesh

Morocco is almost entirely Sunni Muslim of the Maliki school, and mosques here are closed to non-Muslims — that is a national rule with exactly two exceptions, the Hassan the Second mosque in Casablanca and the ruined Tin Mal mosque in the Atlas, which is on this list. What you can see instead is everything around the mosque: the madrasa, the ablution koubba, the fountains, the tombs, and the quarter where the Jewish community lived for four hundred years.

Tin Mal Mosque · 100 kilometres out, and check it is open before driving
Koutoubia Mosque · From outside only, and the gardens behind it are open and lit at night
Ben Youssef Madrasa · From 50 dirhams, and this is the religious building visitors can enter
Almoravid Koubba · From 20 dirhams, an ablution building of 1117, and the oldest thing in the city
Saadian Tombs · From 70 dirhams, 66 graves, and the queue for the marble hall is slow
Lazama Synagogue · From 20 dirhams, in the mellah, and closed on Shabbat to visitors
Miaara cemetery · A donation, 16th-century, and the whitewashed graves lie flat in rows
Mouassine Mosque · From outside, and the fountain is on the north-east corner

Nightlife in Marrakesh

Alcohol in Morocco is legal but awkward: it is served in licensed hotels, in restaurants with a licence and in a few bars in the new town, and almost never in the medina — so the medina night is roof terraces, mint tea, food and music, and the drinking night is in Gueliz and Hivernage. Nothing in the medina runs past midnight; the clubs in the new town run to four. During Ramadan the whole pattern inverts and the square is at its busiest after dark.

Jemaa el-Fnaa after dark · Free, from nine, and a few dirhams to the musicians is expected
Terrasse des Épices · An open roof in the souk, live music at nine, and a licence for wine
Café des Épices · Three floors on the spice square, no alcohol, and open till eleven
Nomad · Book the roof for sunset, licensed, and the medina view is the reason
Dar Cherifa · A 16th-century riad, readings and concerts some evenings, and no alcohol
Gueliz · The licensed bars and the late restaurants, and a taxi back is 30 dirhams
Hivernage · The hotel bars and the clubs, open till four, and a dress code applies
Theatre Royal · The open-air amphitheatre is used in summer, and the programme is irregular

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Frequently asked questions about Marrakesh

What is there to see in Marrakesh?

The top sights in Marrakesh are Jemaa el-Fnaa, Koutoubia Mosque and Ben Youssef Madrasa. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Marrakesh?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Marrakesh without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Marrakesh?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Marrakesh, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The square, and why it is protected.

How do you get to Marrakesh and get around?

The main ways are Menara Airport, Marrakesh station and Bab Doukkala bus station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Marrakesh, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Marrakesh that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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