Marrakechمراكش

Marrakech is a younger city than Fes or Cairo. It was founded around 1070 by the Almoravids, a Berber confederation from the western Sahara whose leaders, Abu Bakr ibn Umar and then his cousin Yusuf ibn Tashfin, needed a camp on the plain where the Atlas foothills meet the routes to the desert. Within a generation the camp was a capital, and from here the Almoravids ruled a territory that stretched from the Senegal river to central Spain. Their son Ali ibn Yusuf raised the first walls in the 1120s and brought water from the mountains through underground channels called khettara, which is why palm and olive groves could grow on a dry plain.

In 1147 the Almohads, another Berber dynasty, took the city after a long siege and destroyed much of what the Almoravids had built. They rebuilt it on a grander scale. The Koutoubia mosque, whose minaret still gives the city its skyline, and the Kasbah, the royal quarter in the south, are Almohad. The Almohads also planted the great orchards, the Agdal and the Menara, which are still there. When the Marinids moved the capital to Fes in the 13th century, Marrakech slid into a long decline.

The Saadian dynasty brought it back. From 1524 they ruled from Marrakech, and Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who reigned from 1578 to 1603, built the El Badi Palace and the Saadian tombs with the wealth that came from a ransom paid by Portugal after the Battle of the Three Kings and from sugar cane grown in the south. After his death the dynasty fractured, and the Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail, who ruled from Meknes, stripped El Badi of its marble and gold in the late 17th century and walled up the Saadian tombs. They were rediscovered only in 1917, when the French authorities saw the roofs in an aerial photograph.

The French protectorate began in 1912. Resident-General Hubert Lyautey decided to leave the old medina untouched and to build a separate European town outside the walls. That town is Gueliz, and the idea explains why the medina is so well preserved. Under the protectorate, Marrakech was run in practice by Thami El Glaoui, the Pasha, whose family palaces still stand in the medina. Morocco became independent in 1956. Today the city has about a million inhabitants, and the medina was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1985.

The medina is a set of quarters that still follow their old logic. Around Jemaa el-Fnaa and the Koutoubia is the ceremonial centre: the great mosque, the square, and the Almohad gate of Bab Agnaou that leads to the Kasbah. North of the square the souks fan out along Souk Semmarine, the main lane of textiles and slippers, and split into streets by trade: blacksmiths in Souk Haddadine, leather and slippers in Souk Cherratine, wool dyers in the dyers' souk. Further north, Mouassine has a mosque and fountain complex built in the 16th century and a quiet grid of riads. Ben Youssef Madrasa and the Almoravid Koubba sit at the northern edge of the tourist souks.

South of the square lies the Kasbah, the Almohad citadel, and around it the palaces: El Badi, Bahia, the Saadian tombs, the Kasbah mosque. This was the sultans' district, and it is still a working residential quarter with schools, bakeries and small workshops. Beside it, entered through its own gate, is the Mellah, the Jewish quarter founded in 1558 by the Saadian sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib. Jews had lived in the city for centuries, but this was the first time they were moved into a walled quarter, near the palace, under royal protection. Most of the community has since emigrated, but the Slat al-Azama synagogue and the large Miara cemetery survive, and the Mellah's markets still sell spices, produce and second-hand goods to Marrakchis, not to visitors.

Outside the walls, Gueliz was laid out from 1913 on a grid with wide avenues, arcades and villas. It has art deco cafés, bookshops and, in recent decades, restaurants and galleries. Hivernage, between the medina and Gueliz, was built as a garden suburb for the French and now holds large hotels and casinos. To the north, the Palmeraie is a vast palm grove, planted according to tradition by the Almoravids and now scattered with resorts and villas. Sidi Ghanem, in the industrial zone north-west, has become the place for design showrooms.

Marrakchis also live in another map of the medina: seven patron saints, the Sebaatou Rijal, each buried in a different quarter and visited on a pilgrimage circuit that people still follow. The saints' tombs are small shrines you can pass without noticing. They explain why the city's identity is tied not only to sultans but to Sufi teachers, and why local people say the city is protected.

Marrakech is red because of what it is built from. The old walls and most houses are made of tabia, rammed earth mixed with lime and gravel, pressed between wooden frames and left to dry in the sun. The local soil is ochre and iron-rich, so the walls glow orange at dusk and fade to pink by noon. Earth is a good insulator in a climate that swings from 5 to 38 degrees Celsius, but it needs plaster and repair every few years, which is why you will see scaffolding and patches in the old walls.

Domestic architecture faces inward. A traditional house or riad, from the Arabic word for garden, is a rectangle of rooms around a courtyard with a fountain or small pool and often four orange trees. The street front is a blank wall with a heavy door; life happens in the courtyard, the roof terrace and the cool ground-floor rooms. In summer families slept on the roof. The plan gives privacy and shade, and it explains why most riad rooms look inward and why the noise of the street feels far away.

Decoration follows Andalusi and Maghrebi traditions. Zellige is the geometric mosaic made from hand-cut glazed tiles, set in patterns based on stars and polygons. Gebs is carved plaster, used for arches and friezes. Cedar from the Middle Atlas provides carved ceilings, doors and screens. Tadelakt, a polished lime plaster that is waterproof, is a Marrakech specialty in hammams and bathrooms and is burnished with a stone and black soap. The Ben Youssef Madrasa, rebuilt in the 1560s, holds all these techniques in one small courtyard.

The great monuments show three ages of taste. The Almohad Koutoubia minaret, about 77 metres high, uses a system of ornament that later inspired the Giralda in Seville. The Saadian tombs show the richer Andalusi style in the 16th century, with Italian marble for the columns. Bahia Palace, built in the late 19th century, is a late Moroccan palace with painted cedar ceilings, mosaic floors and a marble courtyard. The 20th century added the Jardin Majorelle, an Art Deco villa with a cobalt blue studio, and modern additions such as the Yves Saint Laurent Museum, whose brick facade echoes Moroccan weaving.

Moroccan food is a story of trade routes and preservation. Saffron, cumin, ginger and cinnamon came along the caravan and sea routes. Olives and argan grew locally, and preserved lemons and pickled vegetables let households eat through hot summers. Marrakech has its own dishes. Tanjia, a stew of lamb, spices and preserved lemon sealed in a clay urn and left in the embers of a hammam furnace, is a Marrakech tradition sometimes prepared by bachelors for an outing. Mechoui, whole lamb roasted for hours in a pit, is another. In the alleys near Rahba Kedima you can still eat meat that is cooked underground and pulled from the ovens at midday.

The most famous cooking happens outdoors. From about five in the afternoon Jemaa el-Fnaa fills with carts, tables and smoke, and each stall has a number and a specialty: grilled merguez sausage, kefta, fried fish, harira soup, and snails in a broth of cumin and liquorice sold in small bowls. The square turned into a food market in the 20th century and has been reorganised, moved and cleaned up several times since, but the idea has not changed: cook in front of the customer and feed a crowd.

Bread is a household matter. Families make their dough at home and carry it to the neighbourhood communal oven, the ferran, where it is baked for a few coins and carried back on a tray. Khobz, the round loaf, is the fork and spoon of the meal. Breakfast is msemen or baghrir, layered and spongy pancakes, with honey, butter or jam. Sweets follow Andalusi and Arab patterns: almond pastries, sesame biscuits, dates from the southern oases, and honey cakes eaten with tea.

Mint tea is the social glue. Green tea from China, sold to Morocco by British merchants from the 18th century, was mixed with local mint and sugar, and the pot poured from height to make foam. A host who serves it is offering welcome; a shop that serves it is starting a sale. Wine from the Meknes and Benslimane regions is served in licensed venues, but the everyday drink is orange juice, squeezed to order from the orange trees that line many Marrakech boulevards.

The Islamic calendar drives the year and moves about eleven days earlier against the Western calendar every year. Ramadan, the month of fasting from dawn to sunset, changes the city: shops open later, streets are quiet by day, and at sunset the call to prayer signals the first meal, often harira soup with dates and sweet pastries. The nights are busy with families and street traders until well after midnight. Eid al-Fitr, at the end of the month, is a two- or three-day family holiday. Eid al-Adha, about seventy days later, is the sacrifice feast, when each household slaughters a sheep and the city empties.

Jemaa el-Fnaa is at the heart of public life. The name is debated, but the square has been a market, a place of execution and a stage for centuries. Storytellers, healers, musicians, acrobats and snake charmers gather in halqa, circles of listeners. UNESCO proclaimed the square a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage in 2001 and put it on its representative list in 2008. The tradition is fragile: the storytellers are few and the performers now depend on tips from visitors, so ask before photographing and pay if you do.

Music also runs through the city. Gnawa, the tradition of the descendants of enslaved people from sub-Saharan Africa, combines trance, rhythms and the three-stringed guembri bass. Gnawa masters lead night ceremonies of healing, called lila, and their orchestras play at weddings and at the Essaouira festival every June. Weddings in Marrakech are loud and colourful, with processions, drums and a bride carried on a decorated seat.

There are also modern events. The Marrakech International Film Festival, founded in 2001, brings international directors to the city in late autumn in most years (check the dates). The film and art world has fed the growth of galleries and cafés in Gueliz. Public holidays, such as Throne Day on 30 July and Independence Day on 18 November, bring flags, patriotic music and closed banks. Friday is the weekly holy day: shops close around midday prayer and reopen by mid-afternoon.

The souks are not one market but dozens of specialised lanes, and their names still describe what was made there. Souk Haddadine is the blacksmiths' quarter, where lanterns, gates and tools are hammered and welded. In the dyers' souk, skeins of wool hang in red, blue and yellow above the lane to dry. Cherratine is the leatherworkers' street, and Semmarine, the covered lane at the heart of the market, has sold textiles for centuries. Behind them the Kissaria is a maze of covered alleys for fabric, clothes and jewellery. The layout goes back to the Almoravid city, when guilds of workers were assigned to lanes near their mosques and fountains.

Marrakech craft is a working economy, not a museum. The most visible is leatherwork: goat and sheep skins are washed, limed and tanned in stone vats outside the walls near Bab Debbagh, then dyed and cut into slippers (babouches), bags and poufs. It is hot and smelly work. Ceramics and zellige come from the Fes and Safi traditions, but Marrakech potters make jars, lamps and tiles with local red and ochre clays. Woodworkers use cedar, thuya from the Essaouira region and walnut, and carpet weavers from the Atlas villages bring rugs to the medina to sell.

Argan oil is the newer craft. The argan tree grows only in south-west Morocco, and Berber women's cooperatives have long cracked the nuts by hand and pressed the oil for cooking and cosmetics. UNESCO listed the argan landscape and its know-how in 2014, and demand has since pushed up prices and produced many imitations. Buy from a cooperative with a label that names the region, and expect to pay more for real oil.

Buying is a conversation. A first price is an opening, and both sides know it. Bargaining is done with patience, humour and the willingness to walk away. It is good manners to accept a glass of mint tea, not to be rushed, and not to start a price talk unless you would buy. Fixed-price shops, the government craft centre and modern boutiques in Gueliz give you a reference: use them before you enter a haggling lane.

Marrakech wakes with the call to prayer and slows at midday. From June to September the sun forces a rhythm: markets thin at noon, families rest in courtyards, and the streets fill again after 17:00. Outside the old walls the city is a modern, fast-growing metropolis with new roads, a bus network, universities and housing estates. Inside the walls, families rely on small shops, communal ovens, hammams and neighbours, and people call the medina 'the old city' with pride.

Tourism is the city's largest business. Riads, restaurants, guides, drivers and craftsmen all depend on it, and so do many families in nearby villages. That explains both the hospitality and the pressure: touts who offer directions, sellers who call out prices, and offers of tea that lead to a shop. A polite, firm answer, and the willingness to spend money in shops and cafés you have chosen yourself, is fair to everyone. A licensed guide, a workshop visit or a cooking class puts money in a person's hand and stops the game.

The city faces real limits. Water is the main one: Morocco has had years of drought, and groundwater under Marrakech is falling. Gardens are watered, hotels have pools, and the authorities have limited water use for gardens and pools in some dry periods (check current rules). Heat waves are longer, and summer temperatures above 40 degrees are now normal in July and August.

On 8 September 2023 an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck the Al Haouz region about 70 kilometres south-west of the city. About 3,000 people died, most in mountain villages. In Marrakech, parts of the medina walls, old houses and some historic buildings were damaged, and restoration work is still under way. The Koutoubia and the main palaces have reopened, but scaffolding is common and some sights change hours. Check the day before, and if you can, spend money in the affected region, at guesthouses and cooperatives in the Atlas valleys, which need visitors.