Marrakech

Marrakech-Safi

Souks, riads and the Atlas on the skyline

Authentic

Architecture

Food

Mountains

Desert

About Marrakech

Marrakech is Morocco's red city, its walled medina of pink earth spread out on a plain under the snow-capped High Atlas; the old town is a UNESCO site.

Everything turns around Jemaa el-Fna, the square that fills at dusk with food stalls, storytellers, musicians and snake charmers, under the 12th-century minaret of the Koutoubia. North of it the souks run into one another for hours: leather, lamps, spices and dyers' wool, while behind blank walls hide tiled palaces, the Ben Youssef madrasa and riads built around courtyard gardens. Outside the medina are the cobalt-blue Jardin Majorelle and the Yves Saint Laurent museum.

It's loud, crowded and full of hustlers in the souks, and very hot in July and August; spring, autumn and the sunny winter are the time to come. The Atlas villages are an hour and a half away, the Agafay desert less than one.

Eat tanjia, beef slow-cooked in a clay urn in the embers of a hammam furnace, tagines and couscous, and finish with mint tea poured from a height.

Get to Marrakech

Round trip from Prague, any dates in November 2026.

Day trips from Marrakech

Half day
Agafay
~45 min
A stony desert of bare beige hills with the Atlas behind, the nearest taste of the desert without the long road to the Sahara: camel rides, quad bikes and dinner in a tented camp at sunset.
Day trip
Imlil
~1 h 30 min
A Berber village at the end of the road into the High Atlas, at 1,740 m under the snowy Toubkal massif: walnut terraces, mud-brick hamlets and mule paths into the mountains, and for those with two days and a guide, North Africa's highest summit at 4,167 m.
Long day
Essaouira
~2 h 45 min , ~3 h
A walled port on the Atlantic: a white-and-blue medina behind 18th-century sea ramparts, a harbour of blue fishing boats with sardines grilled on the quay, and a long windy beach for kitesurfers.
Long day
Aït Benhaddou
~3 h 45 min
A fortified mud-brick village climbing a hill above a river at the edge of the desert, a UNESCO site and a film set for Gladiator and Game of Thrones, reached over the hairpins of the Tizi n'Tichka pass across the Atlas.