Marrakech: A Gentle Guide to the City Behind the Doors

Most first-time visitors arrive in Marrakech braced for noise. They have seen the photographs of Jemaa el-Fna at dusk, the smoke, the drums, the crowds, and they assume the whole city runs at that pitch.

It does not. Marrakech is a city of thick walls and small doors, and almost everything worth seeing is on the other side of one of them. Push open a studded wooden door in a lane barely wide enough for a donkey cart and you find a courtyard: orange trees, a fountain, tiled benches, birdsong, and a temperature several degrees cooler than the street you just left.

That is the Marrakech we would recommend to anyone over sixty — not a checklist of monuments, but a rhythm of short walks between shaded places. Founded around 1070 at the foot of the High Atlas, the old city has been practising the art of keeping people comfortable in the heat for nearly a thousand years. It is very good at it.

A little history

Marrakech was founded around 1070 by the Almoravids, a dynasty out of the Sahara, as a military camp that hardened into a capital. The mud-and-lime walls they raised still ring the old city, and the pinkish colour of the local earth gave Marrakech its nickname, the Red City.

In 1147 the Almohads took the city and made it the capital of an empire stretching from Andalusia to the edge of the Sahara. Their great gift to Marrakech is the Koutoubia Mosque, whose minaret rises around 77 metres above the palm trees. It became the model for the Giralda in Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat — three siblings scattered across two continents.

Later dynasties added their own layers: the Saadians in the sixteenth century, with their gilded tombs and ruined palace, and the viziers of the nineteenth century, who built the sprawling Bahia Palace. The whole medina was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985, and the living culture of Jemaa el-Fna — the storytellers, musicians and healers — was proclaimed intangible heritage in 2001 and formally inscribed in 2008. It is one of the few World Heritage sites that is protected for what people do there, not only what they built.

A lane in the Medina of Marrakech, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985.

What to see

You do not need many sights in Marrakech. Three or four, chosen well and spaced out, are better than eight rushed.

Jemaa el-Fna

The great square is flat, open and enormous. Our honest advice is not to walk across it in the middle of the day — there is very little shade. Instead, take a seat at one of the terrace cafés that ring the square in the late afternoon, order a mint tea, and watch it fill from above. By sunset the food stalls are up, the drums start, and the whole thing becomes theatre. You can enjoy all of it without taking more than a hundred steps.

The Koutoubia Mosque and its gardens

The mosque itself is not open to non-Muslims, but the gardens beside it are, and they are the gentlest walk in Marrakech: level paths, rose beds, benches, and that honey-coloured minaret above you the whole time. A ten-minute stroll from Jemaa el-Fna along a broad pavement.

Bahia Palace

Built in the 1860s for a grand vizier, the Bahia is a maze of courtyards, painted cedar ceilings and cool tiled rooms, laid out mostly at ground level. It is the easiest of the big monuments to visit on foot. Go early; it is popular with tour groups by mid-morning.

The Saadian Tombs

Sixteenth-century royal tombs, walled up for centuries and reopened to the public after being documented in 1917. The chamber of twelve columns is genuinely beautiful. Be warned: the site is small, the queue to see the main chamber is single-file, and there is little seating. Visit at opening time or late in the day.

Le Jardin Secret

A restored riad garden in the heart of the medina, with ramps, accessible toilets, shaded benches and a café. This is our favourite place in Marrakech to sit down for an hour. There is a tower with a view, but it is reached by stairs only — the garden below is the real pleasure anyway.

Jardin Majorelle

Out in the newer district of Gueliz, the cobalt-blue garden made by the French painter Jacques Majorelle and later saved by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Paths are narrow and it gets crowded; book ahead for a timed entry and go at the first slot of the day.

A narrow street in the old quarter of Marrakech's Medina.

The city behind the door

Here is the fresh angle we would press on any traveller over sixty: in Marrakech, stay in a riad, and treat it as part of the sightseeing rather than just a bed.

A riad is a traditional house built inward around a courtyard. There are no windows on the street — all the light comes down through the middle. The result is a building that stays cool without air conditioning, is quiet even when the lane outside is busy, and usually has a rooftop terrace where breakfast is served under an awning.

Many riads have been converted into small guesthouses of six or eight rooms. The trade-off is honest and worth knowing: most riads have stairs and no lift, and the entrance lane may be too narrow for a taxi, meaning a short walk with luggage (staff will nearly always come to meet you with a cart). If stairs are a problem, ask specifically for a ground-floor room off the courtyard — plenty exist, but you have to request one.

Spend part of each afternoon on your own roof rather than out in the heat. The rooftops of the medina are a landscape of their own: satellite dishes, drying laundry, storks, and the Atlas Mountains showing white on a clear winter morning.

Rooftops across the Medina of Marrakech.

A day trip nearby

The Ourika Valley is the natural half-day escape. It begins roughly 30 to 40 kilometres south of the city — usually 45 minutes to an hour by road — and climbs into the foothills of the High Atlas along a green river valley of walnut trees, terraced fields and Berber villages.

For comfortable travel, the key is choosing your stop. The walk to the waterfalls at Setti Fatma involves scrambling over boulders and is genuinely difficult; skip it without regret. Instead, ask your driver to stop lower down the valley, where several riverside restaurants set their tables directly on the water, reached by a short flat path. A tagine beside a mountain stream, at perhaps ten degrees cooler than the city, is the whole point of the trip.

If you have more time and stamina, Essaouira on the Atlantic coast sits about 190 kilometres west, roughly two and a half to three hours each way. That is a long day in a car — we would rather you stayed two nights there than did it as a day trip.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• Heat is the main obstacle, not the terrain. Marrakech is flat. But July and August routinely see highs near 37°C and sometimes above 40°C, which is simply too much for sustained sightseeing. Come in spring or autumn instead.
• Adopt the local timetable. Out from about 8 to 11.30 in the morning, back indoors for a long lunch and a rest, out again from 5pm until late. Everyone here does this, and evenings are the best part of the day.
• Stay inside the medina, near Jemaa el-Fna or the Kasbah quarter, if you want to walk to the sights. Stay in Gueliz, the modern district, if you want wide pavements, level ground and easier taxi access — it is about a 20-minute drive or a longer walk from the old city.
• The souks are unevenly paved. Expect uneven stone, occasional steps, mopeds and handcarts squeezing past. Wear closed shoes with grip, walk near the edge of the lane, and do not feel obliged to keep moving — step into a shop doorway to let traffic pass.
• Hire a licensed local guide for your first morning. Not because the medina is dangerous, but because a guide sets the pace, knows where the benches and clean toilets are, and takes the pressure off in the souks.
• Carry water and a hat, and use the cafés freely. Ordering a mint tea buys you a shaded chair for as long as you like. Nobody will hurry you.
• Agree the taxi fare before getting in, or ask your riad to call one. Petits taxis are small, so a larger car may be worth requesting if you have mobility concerns.
• Pharmacies are plentiful and well stocked, and many pharmacists speak French. Bring your own prescriptions with generic names written down.

A busy street scene in the Medina of Marrakech.

What to eat

Marrakech has one dish that belongs to it alone: tanjia marrakchia. Lamb or beef is sealed in a tall clay urn with preserved lemon, garlic, cumin, saffron and olive oil, then left for hours in the embers of a neighbourhood bathhouse furnace. It emerges falling off the bone, with a deep, lemony richness quite unlike a tagine. Traditionally it was a bachelor's dish, made by market workers who dropped the pot off in the morning and collected it at lunchtime. Order it a day ahead at most riads.

Beyond that, eat gently. Harira, the tomato, lentil and chickpea soup, is easy on the stomach and served everywhere. Msemen, square flaky flatbreads folded and pan-fried, appear at breakfast with honey. Tagines of chicken with preserved lemon and olives, or lamb with prunes, are reliable and mild. Couscous is traditionally a Friday dish.

For drinks: mint tea, poured from a height, sweeter than you expect (ask for it léger — light — if you prefer). Fresh orange juice from the carts on Jemaa el-Fna is a Marrakech ritual. Stick to bottled water.

If the smoky food stalls on the square feel like too much, the terrace restaurants overlooking it serve the same menu with tablecloths and a view — no shame in that at all.

A spice vendor in the Medina of Marrakech.

Getting there

Our verdict

Marrakech has a reputation for being exhausting, and travellers over sixty are sometimes quietly advised to go somewhere gentler. We think that advice is wrong — or rather, it is advice about the wrong Marrakech.

The tiring version is the one where you try to see everything, on foot, in the middle of the day, in August. The other version is a courtyard, a glass of tea, three sights in three mornings, a rooftop at sunset and a square full of drums that you watch from a chair. That version is one of the most rewarding and least physically demanding city breaks in North Africa.

Come in April or October, stay inside the walls, book a ground-floor room if stairs are a worry, and let the city come to you through its open doors. It will.

Hanging lanterns in Souk Haddadine, in the Marrakech Medina.

“In Marrakech, every blank wall is hiding a garden — you only have to be invited in.”

Photo credits

• 03 Marrakech Medina Afrique Paysage: Misa.stefanovic.07, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Medina of Marrakech 002: Yamen, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Marrakech Medina Feb 2007: gildemax, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
• 01 Marrakech Medina Rooftops: Misa.stefanovic.07, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• MEDINA MARRAKECH MOROCCO APRIL 2013 8894270642: calflier001, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Marrakech Medina vending seasonings: Bernhard Holub, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Oriental hanging lanterns. Souk Haddadine, Marrakech Medina سوق الحدادين مراكش: Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons