We had 5 days in Marrakech, so we planned several day trips outside of the city. The first of which was to Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO world heritage site and cultural landmark in the country. It’s a 3 hour drive from Marrakech, so unfortunately it required a very early rise for our bus shuttle. 

We booked our trip with Click Excursions and I would recommend them. Day trips in Morocco are quite cheap, but there are a lot of options to choose from. Most people just pick one off of Get Your Guide, which is by far the most popular platform in Morocco. It can be hard to know which companies are best, so just make sure to read a lot of reviews. We booked directly with Click Excursions to cut out the middleman and it was cheaper that way.

We had a dedicated guide for the day and the first 3 hours of the trip took us through the Atlas Mountains, which are still in the desert and very barren, but beautiful. We had lots of breaks in the morning to pick up food and water and stopped at a few of the mountain viewpoints. One thing I liked about this tour is that we seemed to be one of the first groups to arrive at Ait Benhaddou, so it was not busy (and overall it seemed to have less traffic than other places we visited). This might be due to the fact that we visited in early June, which is not peak tourist season. It get’s really hot in June, but our tour bus had AC, which was really essential. 

Ait Benhaddou is basically a very old, fortified village that is maintained using all the traditional methods of adobe house construction. It was originally settled in the 11th century and was a key location on the caravan route between Marrakech and the Sahara Desert. Most people actually visit it on the way to the Sahara, but we didn’t do the Sahara on this trip because of time constraints. It became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1987 and since then most of the families who used to live in the village have moved to the modern town across the highway. 

We were met by a local Berber guide whose family grew up in the village and he explained that since they’d received UNESCO status, they had to maintain all the traditional construction methods and can’t change anything in the village. So all but 5 families have moved out of the village to enjoy more modern comforts, but they all continue to maintain it and opt to keep their world heritage status because of tourism. Unfortunately, parts of the village were destroyed in the 2023 earthquake and they are waiting on financial assistance from the government to re-construct. So even though many of the Berber families don’t live in the village proper, there’s still a great sense of ownership and heritage. Make sure to tip your guide and participate in commerce while you’re there because it’s one of their main sources of revenue. 

The other main revenue source is the film industry. Ait Benhaddou features in many films and the locals often participate in constructing the sets or as extras. Some of the more popular films shot there include Gladiator 1 and 2 (they were really excited about this one because Gladiator 2 comes out this Fall), and Game of Thrones. 

To get to the village, you have to cross a small stream and a large dry river bed. Our guide, Mohammad, told us that it hadn’t rained in 15 months! We walked through the village and started climbing up towards the top, stopping for a break in one of the buildings to learn about some of the local artwork techniques. Historically, the Berber people in this area would use tea to send secret messages to each other, because when you write on parchment with tea, it is invisible, but when you pass the backside of the parchment over a flame, the tea burns onto the paper and becomes legible. The tea is no longer used to pass messages, but artists have adopted the practice and use saffron and indigo to paint landscapes of the city. 

It was extremely hot out, but we persisted to climb to the top of the hill to see the view. It is quite a beautiful place and we marveled at the expanse of the desert. We had tajine and skewers in a local restaurant for lunch and then continued on to Atlas Studios in Ouarzazate. I booked the tour to see Ait Benhaddou and didn’t really read up on the rest of the tour. I thought we were going to the city of Ouarzazate, but we were actually going to the film studio outside the city. It seemed super random to us, but it was interesting enough.

We had a very energetic and eccentric tour guide at the studio and he was definitely passionate about movies. He told us that Atlas Studios is one of the biggest studios in Africa – I don’t know how it could compete with the film industry in Nigeria, but from a Western perspective, it’s definitely a popular place for Hollywood movies with desert scenes. Many movies have been filmed there, including The Mummy, Prince of Persia, Gladiator, Cleopatra, Kingdom of Heaven, Aladdin, and some TV shows like Game of Thrones and Prison Break. They have a ton of the movie sets and props preserved, and while we didn’t recognize most of them, it was still a cool experience.

The most unbelievable thing that happened is that while we are on the tour, it started to rain! So after 15 months of no rain, it rained on the one day we visited. It only sprinkled while we are the tour, but then it poured for about 15 minutes on the bus, before completely clearing up again. It felt like a long bus ride back to Marrakech, because we did it mostly in one shot, arriving in the city around 7pm. It’s definitely a full day event. We went out for a quick dinner and then returned to our riad to relax in the pool.

We’d planned another day trip for the next day, but it fell through and we were happy to take it easy in Marrakesh instead. We returned to the markets and made some purchases, but focused more on visiting some of the local attractions. We picked 3 for the day: Medersa Ben Youssef, le Jardin Secret, and the Bahia Palace.

Medersa Ben Youssef is a historic Islamic college that is now a UNESCO world heritage site. It was my favourite of the 3 sites because of the beautiful colours, design, and architecture throughout the building. There’s a large main courtyard and prayer room in the centre, and then it’s surrounded by small rooms for the students.

The Bahia Palace was much more extravagant, but both spaces no longer have any furniture in them, so it’s hard to get a sense of how the space was really used. The Palace also has really beautiful colours and architecture, but it felt a lot like I was just walking through empty room after empty room. The history of the Palace was less apparent as a result, but still a neat experience and there were many beautiful courtyards and gardens.

Finally, le Jardin Secret was the smallest site, but was one of the best spaces from an educational perspective. The garden is really just a restored riad, but it’s very old and large and would have been owned by someone quite wealthy when it was first constructed. It fell into disrepair over the years and was bought by a private owner around 2008 and restored for the public. It didn’t receive any funding, so it’s just the entry cost that pays for the refurbishment.

What makes the space so unique is it’s hydraulic irrigation system. Water was piped to the garden from outside the city, and is dispersed throughout the entire garden using hydraulics and gravity fed channels. It’s a really cool feat of engineering and I’m glad the new owners recognized it and included a lot of information about the system. The water engineer in me definitely geeked out!

We finished the day with another really nice rooftop meal in the medina. I’m not sure what Marrakech is like in peak season, but in June, it’s really easy to get into pretty much any restaurant and we had some delicious meals while we were there!