11 Things to Do in Marrakech That Earned Their Spot on My Fourth Visit
I've been to Marrakech four times now. The first trip I did almost everything wrong. Paid triple for a rug I still don't love, followed a friendly "student" straight into a tannery hard-sell, ate a tagine so bland I nearly cried into the couscous. You learn.
So this isn't the usual list of famous sights wrapped in flowery adjectives. It's the eleven things I'd actually text a friend to do, roughly in the order I'd do them, with the prices I paid and a short list of stuff I'd tell you to skip. Rough conversion: 10 dirham (MAD) is about $1.
1. Walk into Jemaa el-Fna after 7PM — not before
The main square is dead-ish and brutally hot in the afternoon. Come back after sunset and it turns into something else entirely. Smoke from the food stalls, gnawa drummers, storytellers no tourist understands but everyone watches anyway.
Go straight for the orange juice carts (they're numbered — I always end up at #14 out of pure habit, 5 MAD a glass). Then find the snail soup vendor. Yes, snails. Babbouche, 15 MAD a bowl, served with a pin to dig them out. It tastes like cumin and licorice and I think about it more than I should.
One warning: the henna women will grab your hand and start painting before you agree to anything, then demand 200 MAD. Keep your hands in your pockets and say la, shukran (no, thanks). Same goes for anyone draping a monkey or snake on you.
2. Hit Bahia Palace right at opening
Bahia opens at 9AM and the entry is 100 MAD (~$10). Be there at 9. By 10:30 the riding-crop tour guides have packed every courtyard, and the whole point of Bahia is the quiet — the painted cedar ceilings, the zellij tilework, the way light moves across an empty marble floor.
Give it 45 minutes. There's no audio guide and you don't need one. Just wander.
3. Skip Jardin Majorelle. Go to Le Jardin Secret instead.
Controversial, I know. The Majorelle gardens (150 MAD, plus a separate ticket for the YSL museum) are genuinely pretty — that cobalt blue is iconic for a reason, the same shade that's turned the blue-washed lanes of Chefchaouen up north into a photographer's pilgrimage. But you'll queue 40 minutes and shuffle through with three hundred other people taking the same photo.
Le Jardin Secret sits right inside the medina on Rue Mouassine, costs 100 MAD, and is half empty most mornings. Two gardens, a working hydraulic system that's centuries old, and a tower you can climb for a rooftop view. If you must do Majorelle, get there for the 8AM opening and go straight in.
4. Drink mint tea on the roof of Maison de la Photographie
This little photography museum near Ben Youssef costs around 50 MAD and is worth it for the vintage prints alone. But the real move is the rooftop café. Order a mint tea (20 MAD), and you get a view over the medina rooftops toward the Atlas Mountains on a clear day.
It's one of the few rooftops where nobody pressures you to order food or leave. I've sat up there for an hour reading. Nobody cared.
5. See Ben Youssef Madrasa now that it's restored
The old Quranic college reopened in 2022 after a long restoration and it's stunning — easily the most detailed interior in the city. Entry runs about 50 MAD. The central courtyard with its reflecting pool and the carved cedar above the prayer hall is the photo everyone wants, so again: early. It's small, so it fills fast.
6. Eat at Mechoui Alley, point and nod
Just off the northeast corner of Jemaa el-Fna there's a row of stalls selling mechoui — lamb that's been slow-roasted in underground pits since dawn. No menu. You point at how much you want, they hack it off, weigh it, and hand it over with bread, cumin, and salt. A solid plate runs 60-70 MAD.
Get there before 1PM. When the lamb runs out, it's gone, and the good stalls sell out first. This was the meal that fixed my opinion of Moroccan food after that sad first-trip tagine.
7. Do a real hammam, not just the spa version
There are two versions of this. The tourist spa hammam — somewhere like Les Bains de Marrakech — is gorgeous, gentle, and runs 400-600 MAD for a scrub and massage. Lovely if you want to be pampered.
The local version is a neighborhood hammam like Hammam Mouassine. Entry is around 15 MAD, you bring or buy black soap and a kessa glove, and a woman will scrub layers off you that you didn't know you had. It's communal, a little chaotic, and you'll leave feeling reborn. Bring flip-flops and zero shame.
8. Take a cooking class at the Amal Center
A lot of riads offer cooking classes, but I keep recommending the Amal Women's Training Center. It's a nonprofit that trains disadvantaged women in restaurant skills, the class runs about 250-300 MAD, and you actually cook a full tagine or couscous from scratch, then eat it. Book a day ahead by phone or their site.
La Maison Arabe does a fancier, more polished version for more money. Both are good. Amal just feels like your dirhams are doing something.
9. Shop the souks with an actual plan
The souks aren't one market — they're a maze of specialized ones. Souk Semmarine is the wide main artery (and the most marked-up). The square called Rahba Kedima is where the spice and apothecary sellers are, plus the wool dyers nearby.
Haggling rules I live by: never take the first price, aim for roughly 40% of the opening ask, and be willing to walk — half the time they chase you with a better number. It's the same theater you'll find in Cairo's Khan el-Khalili — once you know the rhythm, it's almost fun. Leather babouches should land around 100-150 MAD a pair. And if a guy says a shop is "closed, but my brother's is open," he gets a commission. Smile and keep walking.
10. Get out to the Atlas Mountains for a day
The city is intense, and one day in the mountains resets you completely. Two easy options: the Ourika Valley (waterfalls, riverside cafés, about 90 minutes out) or Imlil (the trailhead village under Mount Toubkal, a bit further).
A shared group day trip runs around $25-40 with hotel pickup. If there are a few of you, hire a private grand taxi for the day — I paid 600 MAD (~$60) split four ways. Lunch in a Berber village, tea with a view, mule traffic on the trail. Worth every dirham.
11. Watch the sun go down from a rooftop bar
End a day with a drink as the call to prayer rolls across the rooftops. Nomad, overlooking Rahba Kedima, does modern Moroccan plates (mains 120-150 MAD) and books out — reserve. Café des Épices next door is cheaper and just as good for the view. For a splurge, El Fenn's rooftop is the prettiest in the city.
Note: Marrakech is fairly dry. Plenty of restaurants don't serve alcohol, so if you want a glass of wine with sunset, El Fenn or a licensed riad is your bet.
A few things in Marrakech I'd honestly skip
The tanneries. Unless you're genuinely buying leather, it's a hard-sell trap that ends with someone demanding a tip for the mint sprig they handed you (it's for the smell — and the smell is rough).
The Palmeraie camel ride. Twenty sad minutes on a tired camel for a photo. Save the camels for an actual Sahara overnight if you ever do one.
Menara Gardens. It's a pavilion next to a big rectangular pond. Pretty in photos, underwhelming in person, and a hassle to reach.
Pro tip
Keep a stack of small dirham notes and coins on you at all times — for tips, the bathroom attendant (2 MAD), the kid who "guides" you back to a landmark, the parking guy. And screenshot your riad's location on Google Maps before you go out, because GPS goes haywire in the medina's narrow lanes and the alleys genuinely all look the same. I've stood thirty feet from my own door, completely lost, more than once. It's part of it.
