See a different side of Marrakech on this 6-night holiday, meeting local families, learning traditional recipes and venturing into the Atlas foothills.

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

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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

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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

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You’ll head south from Marrakech into the green foothills of the High Atlas for a day centred on the people and projects of the Ourika Valley. At a women’s cooperative, you’ll learn about work such as producing argan oil, herbal cosmetics, or textiles. A visit to a small farm shows you how seasonal crops are grown in this mountain setting. 

A community initiative prepares lunch with local ingredients, and you’ll have time to hear about the project over the meal. Later, you’ll visit a village where artisans work in their own workshops. If something catches your eye, you can buy it directly from its maker.

• Duration: full day
• Departs from Marrakech
• Lunch included

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