--- title: "Top 10 Things To Do in Marrakech, Morocco | Wimup" description: "The 10 best things to do in Marrakech, ranked: Jemaa el-Fna, the Bahia Palace, Ben Youssef, Jardin Majorelle and the souks, with prices and day trips." url: https://wimup.com/city/marrakech type: City guide updated: 2026-10-06 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # Top 10 Things To Do in Marrakech Marrakech, Morocco · Africa · By Wimup Editorial, 15 min read Marrakech was founded by the Almoravids around 1070 and gave Morocco its name in most European languages. The medina behind its 19 kilometres of rammed-earth walls has been UNESCO-listed since 1985, and Jemaa el-Fna at its centre was proclaimed intangible heritage in 2001 for the circles that still fill it every night. ## Quick answer The best things to do in Marrakech are Jemaa el-Fna at dusk, the painted ceilings of the Bahia Palace, the restored courtyard of the Ben Youssef Madrasa, the Saadian Tombs, and Jardin Majorelle with the Yves Saint Laurent museum beside it. Three days: two inside the walls and one for Gueliz and a valley run. Buy Majorelle tickets online, because the garden sells none at the gate. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** Mar · Apr · Oct - **Ideal length:** 3 to 4 days - **Budget per day:** $50–95 - **Language:** Arabic and Amazigh, French widely spoken - **Getting around:** On foot in the medina, petit taxi beyond the walls - **Tourism board:** [Official site](https://www.visitmorocco.com/en?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) ## The 10 best things to do in Marrakech ### 1. Take Jemaa el-Fna from the square, then from a rooftop Square · Jemaa el-Fna, Medina, Marrakech 40000 The square is two different places on the same day. Until late afternoon it is juice carts and henna artists working the tourist trade. At dusk the food stalls are wheeled in and lit, and the crowd turns Moroccan, with gnaoua troupes and storytellers holding circles until midnight. Do the ground-level walk first and the rooftop second. - **Time:** 1 to 2 hr - **Cost:** Free - **Best at:** The hour before sunset - **Tip:** Agree a price before a photo, a henna design or a plate ### 2. Circle the Koutoubia minaret Landmark · Avenue Mohammed V, Medina, Marrakech The Almohad mosque that set the pattern for Moroccan minarets, and its 77-metre tower is the tallest structure in the medina by law. The same masons produced the Giralda in Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat. Non-Muslims cannot go inside, which matters less than it sounds: the point is the exterior geometry. - **Time:** 30 min - **Cost:** Free - **Best at:** Floodlit after dark - **Tip:** The gardens behind the minaret are the quiet side ### 3. Read the ceilings at the Bahia Palace Palace · Avenue Imam El Ghazali, Medina, Marrakech Built in the late nineteenth century for a grand vizier, and the most complete surviving example of what Moroccan craft could do when a court paid for all of it at once. The interest is overhead: painted and carved cedar ceilings, no two panels alike. Go early, because the ceilings need standing still to see. - **Time:** 1 hr - **Cost:** About 100 MAD - **Best at:** Opening - **Tip:** Bring cash: the card terminal at the gate is unreliable ### 4. Spend a morning at Jardin Majorelle and the Yves Saint Laurent museum Garden and museum · Rue Yves Saint Laurent, Gueliz, Marrakech Jacques Majorelle spent forty years planting this around a studio painted in the cobalt he mixed and named after himself. Saint Laurent and Bergé bought it in 1980 and saved it from a hotel development. Tickets are online only with timed entry, so the slot you pick decides the experience. - **Time:** 2 to 3 hr for both - **Cost:** From about 170 MAD for the garden - **Best at:** First slot - **Tip:** Book online before you travel: there is no ticket desk at the gate Links: [Website](https://www.jardinmajorelle.com/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) · [Website](https://www.museeyslmarrakech.com/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) ### 5. Walk the student cells at the Ben Youssef Madrasa Historic building · Rue Assouel, Medina, Marrakech The largest Quranic school in Morocco, rebuilt in the 1560s and housing students in around 130 cells on two floors. It reopened in 2022 after a long restoration, and the work is the reason to come now. Climb to the upper storey and look into the cells, barely wider than a mattress. - **Time:** 45 min - **Cost:** About 50 MAD - **Best at:** Opening - **Tip:** The upper cells overlooking the courtyard are the shot everyone misses Links: [Website](https://www.medersabenyoussef.ma/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) ### 6. See what Moulay Ismail could not move at the Saadian Tombs Historic site · Rue de la Kasbah, Kasbah, Marrakech Ahmad al-Mansur buried his dynasty here in imported marble and gilded plaster, and when Moulay Ismail set about erasing the Saadians he walled this in rather than desecrate a graveyard. It stayed sealed until 1917. The Chamber of the Twelve Columns is the finest interior in the city. - **Time:** 45 min - **Cost:** About 100 MAD - **Best at:** Opening or the last hour - **Tip:** Bab Agnaou, the Almohad gate next door, is worth the two-minute detour ### 7. Get lost in the souks north of the square Market · Souk Semmarine, Medina, Marrakech The souks run north as a single covered artery that splits into trades: textiles, dyers, blacksmiths, woodwork, spice. The organisation is medieval and still functional, which is why the noise changes as you move. Set a return point on your phone before you go in: the lanes are not signed. - **Time:** 2 hr - **Cost:** Free to walk - **Best at:** Late afternoon - **Tip:** Follow the flow of handcarts and you will end up back at the square ### 8. Climb the ramparts of El Badi Palace Ruin · Ksibat Nhass, Medina, Marrakech Built between 1578 and 1593 with Italian marble paid for in Saharan sugar, and stripped a century later by a sultan who carted the lot to Meknes. What is left is the plan at full scale, with storks nesting in the pisé walls. The original Koutoubia minbar is displayed on site. - **Time:** 1 hr - **Cost:** About 100 MAD - **Best at:** Late afternoon - **Tip:** The Koutoubia minbar is in a side pavilion and easy to walk past ### 9. Sit out the afternoon in Le Jardin Secret Garden · 121 Rue Mouassine, Medina, Marrakech Two riads on a site the Saadians laid out in the sixteenth century, derelict for decades and opened to the public in 2016. The tower is the reason to pay attention: one of the few places in the medina where you can see the geometry of the quarter you have been walking through. - **Time:** 1 hr - **Cost:** Ticketed - **Best at:** Mid-afternoon - **Tip:** The tower is a separate ticket and the only high view in Mouassine Links: [Website](https://www.lejardinsecretmarrakech.com/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) ### 10. Look at the city that was, at the Maison de la Photographie Museum · 46 Rue Bin Lafnadek, Medina, Marrakech Three floors of a restored fondouk holding photographs of Morocco from the 1870s to the 1950s. It does one thing exactly right: after two days of monuments, the same monuments appear here without the crowds or the satellite dishes. The rooftop café has a clear Koutoubia view and no queue. - **Time:** 1 hr - **Cost:** Ticketed - **Best at:** Late morning - **Tip:** The 1957 colour film of the High Atlas upstairs runs about half an hour Links: [Website](https://maisondelaphotographie.ma/?lang=en&utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) ## Best souks and shopping in Marrakech Six places to buy something, from the dyers' lane to a design district six kilometres out. 1. **Souk Semmarine** (Textiles and leather · Medina): The main covered artery running north from the square, and the spine every other souk branches off. The widest lane in the medina, so navigate by it. 2. **Souk Sebbaghine** (Dyers · Mouassine): The dyers' souk, where skeins of freshly dyed wool hang across the lane to dry and the ground stains a different colour each morning. 3. **Ensemble Artisanal** (Fixed prices · Medina edge): A state-run crafts complex where the prices are fixed and displayed. An hour here calibrates what a rug or a lamp should cost before you start bargaining. 4. **Souk Cherifia** (Independent designers · Sidi Abdelaziz): A rooftop floor of small independent designers above the souk, selling clothes and homeware made in the city. The contrast with the lanes below is the point. 5. **33 Rue Majorelle** (Concept store · Gueliz): A concept store opposite the garden carrying work from a long roster of Moroccan designers. Prices are Gueliz rather than souk, and the labelling names the maker. 6. **Sidi Ghanem** (Design district · Sidi Ghanem): The industrial quarter north of the centre, now a strip of design showrooms and factory outlets. It is where much of what the medina sells is actually made. ## Best restaurants in Marrakech Eight kitchens worth planning a day around, from a nonprofit training canteen to a set-menu palace dinner. 1. **Nomad** (Modern Moroccan · Rahba Lakdima): The rooftop that changed how the medina eats out: four floors of modern Moroccan cooking with two terrace levels facing the Atlas. [Website](https://nomadmarrakech.com/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) 2. **Le Jardin** (Garden courtyard · Sidi Abdelaziz): A courtyard of banana palms and green zellij inside a sixteenth-century building. The best lunch in the medina if the point of lunch is to stop moving. 3. **Al Fassia** (Traditional Fassi · Gueliz): Fassi home cooking run entirely by women, and the place locals name when asked where to send a visitor. The lamb shoulder confit is what to order. 4. **Amal Women's Training Center** (Nonprofit, lunch only · Gueliz): A nonprofit restaurant in Gueliz that trains disadvantaged women in professional cooking. Lunch only, communal tables, and the Friday couscous is worth being early for. [Website](https://amalnonprofit.org/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) 5. **Café Clock** (Cultural café · Kasbah): A converted school in the Kasbah with a camel burger on the menu and a programme of storytelling and gnaoua. The room is the draw. 6. **Dar Yacout** (Set menu, dinner only · Bab Doukkala): The full riad-palace dinner: a set Moroccan menu across many small dishes, in a house Bill Willis decorated. Expensive, theatrical, and worth doing once. 7. **La Famille** (Vegetarian, lunch only · Riad Zitoun): A garden lunch spot off Riad Zitoun Jdid serving one short vegetarian menu that changes with the market. No sign worth speaking of, no dinner, and a queue by one o'clock. 8. **Bacha Coffee** (Coffee house · Dar el Bacha): The Dar el Bacha palace, restored, with a coffee room under its central dome pouring several hundred single origins. Inside the museum, so one ticket does both. ## Best gardens in Marrakech Six green spaces, two of them Almohad, and one built by an Austrian artist out in the palm country. 1. **Menara Gardens** (Almohad basin · Menara): A twelfth-century olive grove around a vast irrigation basin, with a pavilion at one end and the Atlas behind. The most reproduced view in Morocco. 2. **Agdal Gardens** (Royal orchards · South of the Kasbah): Royal orchards laid out in the twelfth century and still worked: hundreds of hectares of olive, orange and pomegranate, fed by channels off the Atlas. 3. **Cyber Parc** (Free, public · Medina edge): An eighteenth-century garden on Avenue Mohammed V, restored as a public park with a lot of shade. The shortcut between Gueliz and the square that nobody uses. 4. **ANIMA Garden** (Art garden · Route de l'Ourika): An art garden on the Ourika road: cactus and bamboo planted around works by Keith Haring and Rodin, with a café looking at the Atlas. 5. **Koutoubia Gardens** (Free, floodlit · Medina): The rose beds and orange walks on the south side of the minaret, open, free and floodlit at night. The best place in the centre to sit with the tower. 6. **La Palmeraie** (Palm grove · Palmeraie): The palm grove north-east of the city, planted under the Almoravids and now threaded with hotels. A calèche circuit or a camel hour at dusk is the standard way to see it. ## Best museums in Marrakech Six collections, from a Saadian palace of confluences to contemporary African art on the edge of town. 1. **Musée de Marrakech** (Palace museum · Ben Youssef): A palace on Place Ben Youssef, built for a defence minister and now a museum of Moroccan art with a vast atrium. The building outranks the collection. 2. **Musée des Confluences, Dar El Bacha** (Restored pasha's house · Dar el Bacha): The residence of the pasha of Marrakech until 1956, restored as a museum. The zellij and carved plaster are the best preserved of any open house in the city. 3. **Musée Boucharouite** (Rag-rug textiles · Medina): A private collection of the rag rugs Amazigh women knot from recycled clothing when wool is not affordable. The most interesting textile display here. 4. **MACAAL** (Contemporary African art · Al Maaden): An independent nonprofit south of the city showing contemporary African art from a permanent collection plus temporary shows. The only museum here doing current work. [Website](https://macaal.org/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) 5. **Musée Tiskiwin** (Trans-Saharan collection · Riad Zitoun Jdid): Bert Flint's collection, arranged as a journey down the caravan route to Timbuktu. Labelled with a scholar's attention and no interactive screens. 6. **Dar Si Said** (Weaving and carpets · Riad Zitoun Jdid): A late nineteenth-century palace holding the national collection of weaving and carpets. The painted cedar dome on the first floor is worth the ticket alone. ## Best hammams and spas in Marrakech Five, from a sixteenth-century public bath to the most expensive treatment room in the country. 1. **Hammam Mouassine** (Historic public hammam · Mouassine): A public hammam attached to the Mouassine mosque complex and in use since the sixteenth century. Expect a scrub that is brisk rather than soothing. 2. **Les Bains de Marrakech** (Private hammam · Kasbah): The best-known spa in the Kasbah, running the full sequence of steam, black soap and rhassoul clay in private rooms. Book ahead: it fills. 3. **Heritage Spa** (Traditional treatments · Derb Arset Aouzal): A medina spa built around traditional treatments with a modern list on top, and the one most consistently recommended for a first hammam. 4. **Hammam de la Rose** (Riad hammam · Dar el Bacha): A smaller, calmer riad hammam near Dar el Bacha with rose-based products and massages that run longer than the standard hour. Good value against the spa hotels. 5. **Royal Mansour Spa** (Palace hotel spa · Hivernage): A wrought-iron atrium of a spa inside the palace hotel the king had built, open by appointment. The only hour in Marrakech where the architecture is the treatment. ## Best neighborhoods in Marrakech Six quarters, and what each one is actually for. 1. **The Medina** (UNESCO World Heritage · Centre): The walled city, 19 kilometres of rampart around a lattice of derbs that dead-end without warning. Nothing in it is navigable by street name. 2. **Gueliz** (Modern city · North-west): The ville nouvelle laid out in 1913: boulevards, galleries, concept stores and the restaurants locals actually book. The antidote when the medina gets heavy. 3. **The Kasbah** (Royal quarter · South medina): The royal quarter behind Bab Agnaou, holding the Saadian Tombs, El Badi and the Royal Palace. Quieter than the northern medina. 4. **The Mellah** (Historic Jewish quarter · South-east medina): The Jewish quarter created in 1558, with the Lazama synagogue still in use. Balconies face the street here, which they do nowhere else in the medina. 5. **Hivernage** (Hotels and nightlife · West): A garden district of hotels, clubs and the Théâtre Royal, built for people arriving by car. Where the city's nightlife concentrates, and where it is loudest. 6. **La Palmeraie** (Resorts and villas · North-east): Villas, golf and resort hotels spread through the palm grove, roughly twenty minutes from the medina by taxi. Calm and green, and a poor base if you plan to walk. ## Best day trips in Marrakech Six runs out of the city, from a half-day in the foothills to an Atlantic port worth its own night. 1. **Ourika Valley** (Half day, about 30 km · High Atlas): The nearest mountain escape, where the road follows a river up into Amazigh villages and ends at waterfalls. A half-day, cool in summer, busy on Sundays. 2. **Imlil and Toubkal** (Full day or two · High Atlas): The trailhead for Jbel Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa. A day gets you a valley walk; the summit needs two days and a licensed guide. 3. **Agafay Desert** (Half day, about 30 km · West): A rocky, lunar plateau thirty kilometres west. It is not the Sahara and nobody should sell it as such, but the sunset over the Atlas from a camp is the real thing. 4. **Essaouira** (Overnight, about 175 km · Atlantic coast): The Atlantic port three hours west: a walled eighteenth-century medina, a working fishing harbour, gnaoua music and constant wind. Worth a night rather than a day. [Wimup guide](https://wimup.com/city/essaouira.md) 5. **Ouzoud Falls** (Full day, about 150 km · Middle Atlas): A 110-metre cascade in the Middle Atlas, dropping in stages into a pool you can reach by boat. A long day, olive groves, and macaques in the trees. 6. **Aït Benhaddou and Ouarzazate** (Overnight, about 190 km · South of the Atlas): Over the Tizi n'Tichka pass to the UNESCO-listed ksar and the film studios. Four hours each way, so take it as an overnight or the first leg of a desert run. ## Festivals & annual events in Marrakech (2026) - **Marrakech International Marathon** (Jan): A road marathon and half marathon through the palm groves and past the Koutoubia in late January, when the temperature suits it. - **1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair** (Feb): The Marrakech edition of the contemporary African art fair, at La Mamounia, with gallery openings across Gueliz and the medina. - **Ramadan** (Feb–Mar): The lunar month moves eleven days earlier each year. Many restaurants close by day, and the square after sunset is the best. - **Rose Festival, Kelaat M'Gouna** (May): The rose harvest festival in the Dades Valley, with parades and a rose souk. The anchor of a southern road trip. - **Marrakech du Rire** (Jun): The comedy festival Jamel Debbouze founded in 2011, with a free open-air night on Jemaa el-Fna that fills the square. - **Throne Day** (30 Jul): The national holiday marking the king's accession, fixed to 30 July. Flags across the boulevards, and a lighter than usual medina. - **Moussem of Setti Fatma** (Aug): A four-day pilgrimage and country fair in the Ourika Valley combining a religious moussem with a large market. - **Marrakech International Film Festival** (Nov): The city's red-carpet week, with international juries and free public screenings projected onto a screen on Jemaa el-Fna. ## Must-try dishes in Marrakech, Morocco - **Tanjia marrakchia**: The city's own dish: beef or lamb sealed in a clay urn and left in the ashes of the hammam furnace for hours. - **Mechoui**: Whole lamb slow-roasted in a pit oven until it pulls apart, sold by weight with cumin and salt. - **Harira**: The tomato, lentil and chickpea soup thickened with flour and finished with coriander. - **Couscous**: Steamed three times over the broth it is served with, and eaten on Friday after prayers rather than every day. - **Pastilla**: A layered warqa pastry of pigeon or chicken with almonds, dusted with cinnamon and sugar. - **Tagine**: Named for the conical clay pot that traps the steam. Order lamb with prunes, or chicken with preserved lemon. - **Babbouche**: Snails simmered in a broth of thyme, liquorice root and aniseed, sold from steaming vats on the square. - **Msemen and beghrir**: Breakfast: a folded flatbread griddled until crisp, and a semolina pancake full of holes. ## Marrakech transport & airports - **Marrakech Menara Airport** (RAK): Six kilometres south-west of the centre. A petit taxi to the medina is a short run, and bus 19 links the terminals with Jemaa el-Fna. Agree the fare before getting in. [Website](https://www.onda.ma/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - **Rail** (ONCF): Marrakech is the southern terminus of the national network. Trains run through the day to Casablanca in around three hours and on to Rabat, Fez and Tangier. Book online for Friday and Sunday services. [Website](https://www.oncf.ma/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - **Buses and coaches** (City and intercity): City buses cover Gueliz, the Palmeraie and the airport, cheap but slow against a taxi. For intercity travel the coaches from Bab Doukkala are the practical way to Essaouira. - **Taxis and calèches** (Petit and grand): Beige petits taxis work inside the city and are metered, though the meter often needs asking for. Grands taxis run fixed routes out of town and are sold by the seat. ## Marrakech at a glance - **Country:** Morocco - **Region:** Marrakech-Safi - **Population:** About 1,002,700 (city, 2024 census) - **Founded:** Almoravid foundation, 1070 to 1072 - **Nickname:** The Red City - **Language:** Arabic and Amazigh, French widely spoken - **Currency:** Moroccan dirham (MAD) - **Time zone:** UTC+1 - **Calling code:** +212 524 - **Airports:** Marrakech Menara (RAK) - **Power:** 220V, types C and E - **Emergency:** 19 police, 15 ambulance, 177 gendarmerie outside cities ## Interesting facts - Morocco is named after Marrakech: the city's name passed into European languages as the name of the whole country. - The medina walls run about 19 kilometres and are built of rammed earth, which takes its colour from the local clay. - Jacques Majorelle trademarked the ultramarine he mixed for his garden studio in the 1930s, and the city now paints its shutters in it. - The Koutoubia minaret is 77 metres and nothing in the medina may rise above it. The same Almohad workshop produced the Giralda in Seville. - Water reaches the gardens through khettaras, sloping underground channels dug from the Atlas foothills. ## Watch [Marrakech Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/marrakech.md), 10:53 ## Marrakech travel FAQ ### How many days do you need in Marrakech? Three to four. Two days cover the medina at a reasonable pace: monuments in the morning, souks in the late afternoon, rooftops at sunset. A third day takes Gueliz, Jardin Majorelle and the museums, and a fourth buys a valley or desert run without cutting anything short. ### When is the best time to visit Marrakech? March to May and October to November. Spring brings the Atlas snowline into view behind the city and daytime temperatures stay workable. July and August regularly pass 40C, which makes the medina hard going by noon. Winter days are mild and bright, and the nights are genuinely cold. ### Can non-Muslims go inside the mosques in Marrakech? No. Working mosques including the Koutoubia are closed to non-Muslims, and that is the rule across Morocco with a small number of exceptions elsewhere. The Ben Youssef Madrasa, Dar El Bacha and the city's palaces and museums are all open to everyone, and between them they show the same craft tradition. ### Do you need a guide for the souks? Not for a first walk. The souks are safe and the lanes eventually spill back onto a main artery, so getting lost costs time rather than anything else. A licensed guide is worth it for a buying trip. Unofficial guides who attach themselves in the street will want paying and will steer you to shops that pay them. ### How much does it cost to visit the monuments? Most of the state-run sites are around 50 to 100 dirhams each: Ben Youssef sits at the lower end, the Bahia Palace, El Badi and the Saadian Tombs at the higher one. Jardin Majorelle is more, and sells online only with timed entry. Carry cash in dirhams, since card terminals at the gates are unreliable. ## Nearby guides - [Ouarzazate](https://wimup.com/city/ouarzazate.md): Morocco · 10 picks - [Essaouira](https://wimup.com/city/essaouira.md): Morocco · 10 picks - [Agadir](https://wimup.com/city/agadir.md): Morocco · 10 picks - [All of Africa →](https://wimup.com/africa): 67 cities Part of the [Morocco guide](https://wimup.com/country/morocco.md) · [Africa](https://wimup.com/africa.md) ## Sources - [Marrakech tourism board](https://www.visitmorocco.com/en?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Spend a morning at Jardin Majorelle and the Yves Saint Laurent museum (official site)](https://www.jardinmajorelle.com/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Spend a morning at Jardin Majorelle and the Yves Saint Laurent museum (official site)](https://www.museeyslmarrakech.com/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Walk the student cells at the Ben Youssef Madrasa (official site)](https://www.medersabenyoussef.ma/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Sit out the afternoon in Le Jardin Secret (official site)](https://www.lejardinsecretmarrakech.com/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Look at the city that was, at the Maison de la Photographie (official site)](https://maisondelaphotographie.ma/?lang=en&utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Nomad (official site)](https://nomadmarrakech.com/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Amal Women's Training Center (official site)](https://amalnonprofit.org/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [MACAAL (official site)](https://macaal.org/en/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Marrakech Menara Airport (official site)](https://www.onda.ma/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Rail (official site)](https://www.oncf.ma/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.