Things to do in Marrakesh

Marrakesh sits on a dry plain with the High Atlas along the southern skyline. The Almoravids founded it in the 1070s. What they left is a walled oval of red pisé, nineteen kilometres of it.

Inside the walls

Everything orients on Jemaa el-Fna. By day it is juice carts and snake charmers; after dark, food stalls, storytellers and Gnawa drummers. UNESCO lists the medina as built heritage and the square separately, for what happens on it.

• Koutoubia — the Almohad mosque of the 1150s, its 77-metre minaret finished around 1195.
• Ben Youssef Madrasa — the Saadian college of the 1560s, reopened in 2022 after restoration.
• Bahia Palace — a vizier's courtyard house of painted cedar ceilings, coolest floor in the medina at noon.
• El Badi — Ahmad al-Mansur's palace of 1578, stripped to brick by Moulay Ismail, storks on the walls.
• Saadian Tombs — sealed by the same sultan and not reopened until 1917.
• The souks — laid out by trade, from Semmarine to the dyers' lane and the tanneries at Bab Debbagh.

Gueliz and the gardens

Outside the walls the city changes register. Gueliz is the protectorate new town: galleries, wine lists and the Majorelle garden, a garden since 1923, cobalt since 1937. The Yves Saint Laurent museum opened next door in 2017.

What the city sells

Past the walking, Marrakesh sells its hands. Cooperatives run workshops in argan oil, carpet weaving, tilework and tagine cooking. Hammams range from a bucket in a neighbourhood room to a spa with a menu.

Agafay is not the Sahara. It lies half an hour south-west, stony hammada rather than sand. Its quad runs and candle-lit dinners make a good evening all the same.

Real dunes mean two nights out, at Merzouga or Erg Chegaga. Mountains, waterfalls and the coast all leave before eight. Balloons go earlier still.

Practical

• Heat. July and August routinely pass 38C. The working day is an early start, a long shaded middle and a second wind after six.
• From the airport. Menara is fifteen minutes from the medina by petit taxi. Agree the fare first, or insist on the meter.
• Inside the walls. Cars do not fit down the derbs, so a riad address is a walk from the nearest gate.
• Haggling. Souk prices open high and settle near half. The state craft centre marks fixed prices, which teaches you the range.
• Being helped. A stranger saying the way is closed, or that a Berber market runs today only, is opening a sale that ends at a carpet.
• Prices. Mint tea runs ten to twenty dirhams, a tagine in a medina restaurant several times that.