48 Fun Facts About Marrakech

Which city, like Marrakech, is one of Morocco's four imperial cities?

Rabat. Morocco's imperial cities are the four that served as capital under a ruling dynasty, which is why Casablanca, the country's biggest city, isn't one.

What colour gives Marrakech its famous nickname?

Red. The 'Red City' is named for the old town's ramparts and buildings of beaten clay, whose reddish earth gives the whole medina its colour.

Which mountain range rises to the south-east of Marrakech?

Atlas Mountains. The High Atlas peaks stay snow-capped through winter, and Oukaïmeden, a short drive from the hot city, is Morocco's main ski resort.

Marrakech lies in the valley of which river?

Tensift. The river passes the city's northern edge on its way to the Atlantic, and until a 2015 redrawing the whole region was called Marrakech-Tensift-El Haouz.

Which dynasty founded Marrakech in the 11th century as its capital?

Almoravids. They began as Berber nomads deep in the Sahara, and from their new capital they went on to rule an empire reaching into Spain.

Which trio's 1969 hit 'Marrakesh Express' recalls a train ride from Casablanca?

Crosby, Stills & Nash. Graham Nash wrote it about a 1966 holiday train ride, and his old band the Hollies turned the song down as not commercial enough.

Which Córdoba-born philosopher died in Marrakech in 1198?

Averroes. Banished in 1195 and his books burned, he was soon recalled to the court at Marrakech and died there; his body was later carried home to Córdoba.

Which movement captured Marrakech in 1147 and made it their own capital?

The Almohads. From the 1120s their revolt was based at Tinmel, a mountain village to the south, and it took more than twenty years of fighting before Marrakech fell.

Which city took over as capital when the Marinids conquered Marrakech in 1269?

Fez. The Marinids preferred to rule from the north, and Marrakech slid into decline until the Saadians made it a capital again in the 16th century.

Which ruined Marrakech palace did sultan Ahmad al-Mansur build?

El Badi Palace. Its name is usually translated as 'the Incomparable', yet later rulers stripped it bare, and Moulay Ismail is said to have carted its marble off to build Meknes.

The 'Seven Men' buried in Marrakech are the city's seven what?

Patron saints. Sultan Moulay Ismail set up the pilgrimage to their seven tombs in the late 1600s, partly to draw crowds away from a rival Berber pilgrimage near Essaouira.

Who was Pasha of Marrakech for almost the entire French Protectorate?

T'hami El Glaoui. He helped the French depose and exile the sultan in 1953, then knelt before him to ask forgiveness two years later and died within months.

Which exiled sultan's 1955 return led to Moroccan independence?

Mohammed V. The French had deposed him in 1953 and sent him to Corsica, then Madagascar, but the unrest that followed forced them to bring him back.

Which Alfred Hitchcock thriller opens with an American family on holiday in Marrakech?

The Man Who Knew Too Much. A dying Frenchman, stabbed in Jemaa el-Fnaa, whispers a secret to James Stewart, and Doris Day's 'Que Sera, Sera' went on to win an Oscar.

Which fashion designer bought and restored the Majorelle Garden?

Yves Saint Laurent. He and Pierre Bergé bought the garden when it was slated to be razed for a hotel, and his ashes were scattered there in 2008.

Marrakech's Majorelle Garden is famous for walls and a villa painted which intense colour?

Cobalt blue. Painter Jacques Majorelle, who spent almost forty years planting the garden, used the shade so widely that it is now known as Majorelle blue.

Which Marrakech monument, walled off by a sultan, was rediscovered only in 1917?

Saadian Tombs. Moulay Ismail walled off the necropolis of the dynasty his own had replaced, and a French aerial survey of the medina is said to have spotted it again.

Which international body was established by the Marrakesh Agreement of 15 April 1994?

The World Trade Organization. Ministers signed the deal in Marrakech to close eight years of Uruguay Round trade talks, and the new body replaced the GATT at the start of 1995.

Which UN event did Marrakech host in November 2016?

A Climate Change Conference. COP22 opened three days after the Paris Agreement took legal force, which made it the first meeting of the countries that had joined the deal.

Which business on Marrakech's main square was destroyed in the April 2011 bomb attack?

Argana Cafe. The blast wrecked the upper floor of the café overlooking Jemaa el-Fnaa, and most of those killed were foreign visitors.

Marrakech souks like Haddadine are named after what?

Their trades. Haddadine is the blacksmiths' souk, and in the dyers' souk skeins of freshly dyed wool are hung out to dry.

Jemaa el-Fnaa, the great square of Marrakech, has a name often translated as what?

Assembly of the dead. The meaning is disputed: some link it to the executions once staged on the square, others read it as 'mosque of annihilation', after a mosque left unfinished there.

Which Spanish tower is the near-twin of Marrakech's most famous minaret?

La Giralda. Seville Cathedral's bell tower began as the minaret of a mosque built by the same dynasty, which is why it so closely resembles its Marrakech twin.

Which Marrakech landmark is named after the booksellers who once traded beside it?

Koutoubia Mosque. Churchill painted its tower in 1943 and gave the picture to Roosevelt; it was his only painting of the war, and in 2021 it sold for a record price for his work.

Which famous gate, built by Ya'qub al-Mansur, was the main entrance to the Kasbah?

Its floral carving is framed by a Quranic inscription in foliated Kufic script.

What were the khettaras that watered Marrakech's gardens?

Underground channels. First dug about nine centuries ago, the tunnels carried water in from the foothills, which is how a hot, dry city came to have its great gardens.

Which walled royal garden, begun in the 12th century, is the largest historic green space in Marrakech?

Agdal. Its orchards cover several times the area of the Menara, and in 1873 Sultan Mohammed IV drowned in its great reservoir while out boating with his son.

What is a riad?

A mansion with a central garden courtyard. Blank walls face the street and every room looks inward, which keeps a riad private and cool; many are now guesthouses.

Marrakech's 16th-century royal mausoleums stand beside the south wall of which mosque?

Kasbah Mosque. It was the mosque of the walled royal citadel, so the ruling dynasty raised its family mausoleums directly against its southern wall.

Which large birds famously nest on top of Marrakech's old ramparts and palace walls?

Storks. They are seen all over the old city, and the arts centre Dar Bellarj, 'house of the storks', was once a hospital for injured birds.

What was the Mellah of Marrakech?

The Jewish quarter. Sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib moved the city's Jews there in the 1550s, close by his own palace, and a synagogue and a Jewish cemetery survive.

Which grand Marrakech hotel was a favourite painting spot for Winston Churchill?

La Mamounia. Churchill told his wife it was 'one of the best I have ever used', and the hotel now has a bar and a suite named after him.

Which Marrakech new-town district was laid out west of the old city under the French Protectorate?

Gueliz. The first French Resident-General, Lyautey, had his architect Henri Prost plan its wide avenues from 1913, well apart from the medina.

Which trance music of Marrakech and Essaouira is traced to the descendants of enslaved West Africans?

Gnaoua. Its players are healers as much as musicians: all-night ceremonies build on the clatter of iron castanets called qarqabou until dancers fall into a trance.

Tanjia marrakshia, Marrakech's signature dish, is slow-cooked in what?

A ceramic pot buried in hot ashes. Cooks traditionally carry the sealed urn to the neighbourhood hammam, where it stews for hours in the embers of the furnace that heats the baths.

What does the spice blend name ras el hanout literally mean?

Head of the shop. The name promises the best a spice merchant has to offer, and each stall mixes its own blend, sometimes from two dozen spices or more.

What is a pastilla?

A filo pie with chicken or pigeon. The twist is on top: the savoury pie is served hot under a dusting of icing sugar and cinnamon.

Mechoui Alley in Marrakech's medina is named for which speciality?

Roast lamb. Mechoui is a whole lamb slow-roasted for hours, here in underground pit ovens, and the stallholders tear off hunks to order.

What is the top prize at Marrakech's International Film Festival called?

Étoile d'Or. Morocco's film-loving king launched the festival in 2001, and its 'Golden Star' has been awarded by juries under Martin Scorsese and Bong Joon Ho.

Which drink, served all over Marrakech, is jokingly nicknamed 'Berber whisky'?

Mint tea. Green tea steeped with fresh spearmint and plenty of sugar is the alcohol-free drink of hospitality poured for every guest, hence the joke.

Which actress played a young English mother adrift in 1970s Marrakech in the film Hideous Kinky?

Kate Winslet. The 1998 film follows a mother and her two small daughters scraping by in the city, and it comes from Esther Freud's autobiographical novel.

In Marrakech, what is a calèche?

A horse-drawn carriage. They wait in ranks beside Jemaa el-Fnaa, and a slow circuit of the ramparts or a ride out to the Palmeraie is a classic way to see the city.

Which 2010 film sequel was filmed in Morocco, partly around Marrakech?

Sex and the City 2. Morocco stood in for Abu Dhabi throughout, and the lavish hotel where the four friends stay is really a resort just outside Marrakech.

Which English author wrote the essay 'Marrakech' after wintering in the city in 1938 and 1939?

George Orwell. A friend secretly paid for the trip so he could escape the English winter and rest his damaged lungs, and he wrote the novel Coming Up for Air while there.

Which Malian city did a Marrakech sultan's army seize in 1591?

Timbuktu. The conquest opened the gold trade to the sultan but ruined the city: its scholars were arrested in 1593 and some were exiled to Morocco.

A Marrakech-born technician exposed which country's secret nuclear weapons programme in 1986?

Israel. Mordechai Vanunu, who worked at the Dimona plant, passed photographs to a British newspaper, was lured to Italy and abducted by Mossad, then spent 18 years in prison.

Which trade gives the Bab Debbagh quarter of Marrakech its famously strong smell?

Leather tanning. Hides are soaked in open vats, traditionally with pigeon droppings to soften them, and the yards were put at the city's edge partly because of the stench.

In Persian and Urdu, the name of Marrakech is also the word for what?

The whole country of Morocco. Europeans did much the same: the land was long known as the Kingdom of Marrakesh, and the English word Morocco comes from the city's name.