Things to do in Marrakesh
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a El-Fna Food Stalls
Around sunset, donkeys descend on the Djemaa hauling gas canisters by the cartload and all the makings of 100 small restaurants. Within the hour, the restaurants are up and running, with chefs urging passers-by to note the cleanliness of their grills, the freshness of their meat, produce and cooking oil, and their aromatic spice mixes.
The grilled meats and cooked salads are cheap and often tasty, and despite alarmist warnings your stomach should be fine if you use your bread instead of rinsed utensils and stick to bottled water. Adventurous foodies will want to try Marrakesh specialities such as steaming snail soup, sheep's brain, and skewered hearts - always go for the…
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Djemaa El-Fna
Grab a front-row or balcony seat at a café alongside the Djemaa, and watch the drama unfold. As the sun travels across the sky, orange-juice vendors make way for healers and henna tattoo artists, who scoot over for snake charmers, astrologers and acrobats. Around dusk, the storytellers begin their epic tales, and cooks cart in the makings of 100 restaurants specializing in barbecued everything, tasty cooked salads and steaming snails.
For the ultimate dinner theatre, look no further than the Gnaoua drummers, male belly dancers and Berber musicians surrounding the Djemaa dining action.
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Jardin Majorelle & Museum of Islamic Art
Owned by the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint-Laurent Foundation, this exotic sub-tropical garden provides a haven away from the hectic pace outside. The garden was designed by the French painter Jacques Majorelle, who lived here from 1922 to 1962. In among the cooling water features, the cacti, majestic palm trees and cascades of bougainvillaea, is a small museum.
The museum contains one of those Moroccan collections you'd love to scoop up and take home, including Berber and Tuareg jewellery and textiles, carpets, wedding curtains and cobalt blue pottery - all labelled in Arabic and French. Another room is dedicated to Majorelle's work.
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Mohammed Ben El-Hair
Mt Everest is overrated; the most thrilling mountain to scale is the one of colourful Berber carpets in this tiny shop. Charming elderly proprietor Abu Mohammed ushers you in with a smile and mint tea, then waves towards the mountain with a single word of English: 'Democracy!' This is your invitation to clamber up, and start pulling down whatever carpets appeal to you. The prices are more than democratic; they're downright proletarian.
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Tangia
Can a standard chicken tagine with olives and preserved lemons really be worth almost three times what you'd pay in the Djemaa? Tangia will quell any such doubt with aromatic herbed olives, caramelised sauce with a lemony tang but no bitterness, and plump chicken very different from the anorexic variety served elsewhere - and at the next table over, the editors of American and French Vogue also seemed to approve.
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Berber Trails 4WD Day Trip from Marrakech
8 hours (Departs Marrakech, Morocco)
by Viator
lt;!-- --gt; Follow ancient Berber Trails across the Atlas Mountains on a day trip from Marrakech into the Moroccan past. From the valleys to the mountain…Not LP reviewed
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Mamounia Casino
As if drinking OJ from re-used glasses in the Djemaa el-Fna weren't enough of a gamble, just down the street is the Mamounia Casino. There are many places in Marrakesh that look like a Vegas version of Morocco, but the casino makes good on the comparison with blackjack, poker, baccarat, roulette and slot machines. Dress to pass the doorman's once-over - sorry, even high rollers don't get by in jeans.
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Fantasia Moroccan Dinner and Cultural Show
4 hours 30 minutes (Departs Marrakech, Morocco)
by Viator
lt;!-- --gt; Discover all the fun and excitement of Moroccan folklore at the Fantasia Moroccan Dinner and Cultural Show.lt;pgt;Presented in the heart of a…Not LP reviewed
from USD$48.94 -
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Association Al Kawtar
Bring some baraka (good vibes) to your table with hand-embroidered table linens in spare, striking designs, all made at a nonprofit vocational training and daycare centre for disabled women and their children. Exquisitely edged pillow cases, hand towels and napkins make lovely feel-good gifts at perfectly reasonable fixed prices.
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Hammam Dar el-Bacha
For the authentic experience at a bargain price, head to your local neighbourhood hammam – you’ll find one near most major mosques, since hammams traditionally share a water source with ablutions fountains. Here entry costs less than Dh10, massage costs from Dh50 to Dh100 and gommage (scrub) Dh15 to Dh20. One of the more impressive historic hammam is the vast Hammam Dar el-Bacha. Bring your community hammam kit: towel, flip-flops, plastic mat and a change of knickers (you’ll be expected to wear yours).
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Chez Les Nomades
A wide selection of antique and modern Berber carpets, reasonable prices, and a pleasant all-around carpet-shopping experience. Salah will explain (in perfect English) key differences in motifs, regions and quality with a variety of carpet types, then pull out carpets in whatever style and size appeals to you. Enjoy the tea and the education, without the usual hustle; here the selection speaks for itself.
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Al Fassia
Thank goodness Al Fassia is a la carte, if only to save gourmets from our own gluttony. The array of nine starters alone is a proper feast, with orange-flower water and wild herbs raising even the lowly carrot to a crowning achievement. But there's no resisting the legendary mains, cooked Middle Atlas style by an all-women team who present the dishes with a heartfelt b'saha to your health.
The generous helpings seem impossible to finish, but look around and you'll see glassy-eyed diners valiantly gripping morsels of bread, scraping the last savoury caramelized onion from what was once a Berber pumpkin and lamb tagine. The seasonal menu offers enough delights for two…
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Koutoubia Minaret
When the present mosque and its iconic Moorish minaret were finished by Almohad Sultan Yacoub el-Mansour in the 12th century, 100 booksellers were clustered around its base - hence the name Koutoubia, meaning 'booksellers'. In the recently refurbished gardens outside the mosque, you might still notice a recent excavation that confirmed a longstanding Marrakshi legend.
The pious Almohads were apparently distressed to discover that their lax Almoravid predecessors had built a mosque that wasn't properly aligned with Mecca, and razed the place to build another. Atop the minaret are three golden balls made of copper. The originals were reputedly real gold donated by the…
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Les Palais Rhoul Hammam
A classic Moroccan hammam, with separate chambers for varying levels of heat, zellij (mosaic) and tadelakt (polished plaster) walls, and sunbeams filtering through vaulted ceilings. It's oddly placed alongside a French baroque villa, amid fake Berber tents pitched in a formal garden - but don't let that deter you. The standard hammam treatment includes gommage, rhassoul with orange-flower water and massage with organic essential oils, and it really Rhouls. Treat yourself to cocktails afterwards at Abyssin and you may have to be scraped up and mailed home.
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Théâtre Royal
Twenty-five years in the making, the Théâtre Royal is a sore subject for Marrakshis still waiting for a completed interior - apparently the work wasn't done to specifications, the money's gone, and the whole legal ordeal's become a monumental embarrassment. Meanwhile regular performances are held in a Carthage-style outdoor amphitheatre with hard seats but terrific acoustics.
Tunisian architect Charles Boccara's Maghrebi monument features Egyptian Art Deco papyrus pillars, a Sahara sand-coloured portico, and showstopping Moroccan exposed brickwork in the domed foyer.
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Café Du Grand Balcon
The best spot to catch all the action in the Djemaa, with permanent crowds on the front patio to prove it. Older gents hang out inside to avoid the patio jostling and panhandling on the patio, but only families and clandestine lovers actually go upstairs to the quiet 'grand balcon', where service is erratic at best. The OJ here is not freshly squeezed, but there are mean espressos, frothy cappuccinos, and proper tea with mint or steamed milk.
Technically this place serves ice cream, but there's far better around the corner at Ice Legend.
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Michi
Berber wabisabi is the design ethic at Michi, a creative partnership of Japanese Marrakesh resident Masayoshi Ishida and Marrakshi master craftsmen. Together they've created a look that combines natural materials, spare forms, and a whimsical sense of humour: woven raffia wing-tip shoes, a long-handled mug with a tiny orangewood spoon, flour-sack tote bags lined with basketry.
Even with your most winsome bargaining behaviour, Michi is more expensive than most souq shops: staff know you won't find this stuff elsewhere.
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Musée de Marrakech
Elegantly restored into a museum in 1997 by the Omar Benjelloun Foundation, the Musée de Marrakech presents rotating traditional arts displays including Rabati embroidery, Moroccan Jewish artefacts and High Atlas carpets, plus the usual orientalist artwork in the original hammam. Occasional concerts in the grand courtyard are not to be missed, the courtyard café features tasty omelettes and intriguing contemporary Moroccan art, and the bookshop offers a small but superior selection of art books, maps and postcards.
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Le Pavillon
Just when you think you've taken a wrong turn, a lantern-bearer appears to guide you down the long alley to this lovely riad and its fig tree-filled garden of Gallic delights with Moroccan touches. The duck breast with peaches is especially tender and juicy, and the fish is flaky and delicately scented with local herbs.
The downside is the wine selection: the house wine by the glass we tried was tannic with a vague aftertaste of tyres, so you'll have to spring for the overpriced wines by the bottle.
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Enfin
Trim, modern, hottie tunics for men in sumptuous materials and colours: deep red linen, ivory with black trim around the neck, black raw silk with a single off-centre grey stripe. Prices aren't cheap, but with the right bargaining banter you can get better deals here than in Enfin's factory outlet in Sidi Ghanem. The pink-and-black boutique and sharply dressed staff are incongruously glitzy for the raw, hardworking northern section of the souqs - but that's what makes Enfin so quintessentially Marrakesh.
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Ramparts
In the 12th century, the Almoravids wrapped the Medina snugly in 19km of mud brick 5m tall, so that the city doubled as a fortress. But this didn't keep out the Almohads, who considered their predecessors irredeemably corrupt and razed the city, leaving almost no trace of their 85-year rule except for these ramparts. Today the ramparts are for lovers, not fighters, with couples patrolling the rampart gardens at sunset. Calèches (horse-drawn carriages) are available near the Djemaa el-Fna.
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Bab Agnaou
One of the 20 gates in Marrakesh, this 12th-century 'gate of the Gnaoua' (named for the sub-Saharan slaves who served the sultan) was one of the first stone monuments in Marrakesh and a triumph of Marrakshi artisanship. From afar the bas-relief appears much deeper than it actually is, due to a sophisticated trompe l'oeil effect. The bluish-gold-green colour of its Guéliz stone seems to change like a mood ring according to the time of the day, the heat and, perhaps, the city's disposition.
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Bob Music
In case you hadn't noticed the Bob Marley posters and music throughout the souqs, this store makes the Marrakesh-Jamaica connection even more obvious. Gnaoua musicians are quick to point out the similarity in some rhythmic patterns and tunes, but you can put this ethonomusicology theory to the test yourself: pick up some Gnaoua castanets or a drum in this shop, and try your own Gnaoua rendition of 'Redemption Song'. No matter how badly you play it, you're bound to make their day at Bob Music.
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Sidi Ahmad Gabaz Stucco
Like any visitor with 20/20 vision, you may already be awestruck by the stucco detail up the street at the Ali ben Youssef Medersa - and this is your chance to take home a piece of the stucco action. Sidi Ahmad carves traditional geometric and floral designs right in his shop as well as sweet nothings in French, but with a day's turnaround he will very graciously carve your house number or whatever you like in English…just don't get any four-letter ideas, you naughty people.
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Canal Forme
Trips through the souqs are enough of a workout under normal circumstances - but when a Marrakshi invites you for a 'simple meal' at which you will inevitably be urged to eat twice your weight in roast lamb, a trip to the gym might not be such a bad idea. In addition to the gym equipment, this six-floor(!) spa and fitness centre offers squash courts, African dance classes and an indoor pool with underwater spinning classes. Prices vary depending on your choice of activity.
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