Marrakech Holidays

You’ll leave Marrakech for the High Atlas, Morocco’s highest mountain range. As the road climbs, city streets give way to valleys, orchards, and villages on the mountainsides. A guided walk takes you past terraced fields and the irrigation channels that carry water to the crops, giving you a closer look at how people live and farm here. 

The invitation into a local family’s home is the heart of the day. You’ll share a traditional lunch, then have time to explore a little further or stay for mint tea before heading back to Marrakech.

• Duration: full day
• Timings: 9am to 6pm 
• Daily departures 
• Lunch included

Marrakech’s medina is its walled old city, with souks, neighbourhoods, and historic landmarks threaded through a maze of lanes. Your guide will help you find your bearings and show you places you might otherwise walk straight past. You’ll see the Koutoubia Mosque’s landmark minaret, visit Ben Youssef Madrasa, once a school for Islamic learning, and explore the decorated courtyards of Bahia Palace. 

After lunch at a local restaurant, you’ll visit Le Jardin Secret, a restored garden designed in the Islamic tradition. Then it’s on through the spice square to workshops where craftspeople work with leather, metal, and ceramics. You’ll see where neighbours bring their bread to a communal bakery, stop for mint tea and pastries in a traditional riad, and finish among the storytellers and performers of Jemaa el-Fna square. This introduction makes the medina easier to explore for the rest of your stay, whether this is your first visit or your fifth.

• Duration: full day 
• Timings: 9am to 5pm 
• Daily departures 
• Lunch included

Set the alarm! You’ll rise above the palm groves and villages outside Marrakech in a hot air balloon, watching the landscape come into view with the sun. Back on the ground, a traditional breakfast awaits in a tent. 

Then return to Marrakech to see a different side of the city. At Jardin Majorelle, you’ll walk through the botanical garden created by painter Jacques Majorelle and later restored by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Majorelle’s former studio houses the Pierre Bergé Museum of Berber Arts, an introduction to Morocco’s Amazigh culture. Nearby, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech explores the designer’s work. You’ll finish with a drive along the broad boulevards of the newer city.

• Duration: half day 
• Timings: 5.30 am to 12pm with the start time varying by sunrise 
• Daily departures 
• Breakfast included 

Good to know 
Balloon flights depend on the weather. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech is closed on Wednesdays.

Here’s a Marrakech souvenir you can use in your own kitchen. You’ll start at a medina market with a local host, choosing seasonal vegetables, fragrant spices, and freshly baked bread. Then you’ll wind through the lanes to a family home and get cooking. 

You’ll prepare a dish such as tagine, a slow-cooked meal named after its clay pot, or harira, a hearty soup. As the spices warm and lunch comes together, your host will show you the techniques behind it. Beginners can get stuck in, and confident cooks can pick up new ideas to take home. First, though, you’ll sit down together to eat what you’ve made, with mint tea to finish.

• Duration: half day 
• Timings: 10am to 2pm 
• Daily departures 
• Lunch included

You’ll hear Marrakech’s storytelling tradition come to life in the voice and gestures of a hikayat storyteller. Legends and folk tales set the scene before you sit down to a traditional Moroccan dinner accompanied by Sufi music, with chanting and instruments woven through the performance. 

Sufism is a spiritual tradition within Islam. You don’t need to know anything about it beforehand: after the music, a Sufi scholar will explain its place in Moroccan life and culture. You’ll leave with a better understanding of what you’ve heard, as well as a story or two to tell yourself.

• Duration: 3 hours 
• Timings: 6.30pm to 9.30pm 
• Daily departures 
• Dinner served during the experience