Guide · Marrakech
Seventeen places, one city
Start in the square at dusk and walk outward. By the palm grove the city has given up and become desert, and every place on the way has its own hour.
How to read this
Medina first, then outward.
Marrakech is a walled medina with a French town beside it, gardens around it and an oasis beyond, and the seventeen places the studio paints are spread across all of that. This is the order a walk would take them in, quarter by quarter. Each place has its own page with the full history, what the painting shows, which coats and temperaments it suits, the frame that fits it and the questions people ask before choosing it; this is the map.
Every one of the seventeen is real, at its true coordinates, painted at its own hour.
1 · The Medina
The Medina
Eleven hundred years of alleys inside a red wall. Nothing here is on a grid, and every doorway is a different hour of the day.
Jemaa el-Fnaa Dusk
Start where the city starts. The great square has been a marketplace since the Almoravids laid Marrakech out in the eleventh century, and at dusk it becomes the largest open-air kitchen in Morocco — storytellers, drummers, orange-cart lamps. The studio paints it just after rain, when the flagstones hold the sky and every lantern doubles itself, with the animal on a red rug in the middle of all that noise, not moving at all.
Ben Youssef Madrasa Mid-morning
North of the square, through the lanes, is the quietest courtyard in the medina. The Ben Youssef Madrasa was rebuilt in 1565 as the largest Quranic college in the Maghreb — 130 cells around one basin of still water, zellij to shoulder height, cut stucco above it, carved cedar above that. Painted mid-morning and empty, with one blade of sun across the marble. The cool, bounced light is the kindest in the collection to a pale or feathered coat.
Souk Semmarine Midday
The spine of the market runs south from the madrasa back toward the square. Souk Semmarine — the farriers’ souk, by name — is roofed in slatted reed that has been striping the ground in bars of light for as long as anyone has records. Rugs folded over rails, lanterns overhead, copper at knee height. Painted at midday, when the sun comes straight down through the slats and lands across the animal’s back like brushwork.
Bahia Palace Siesta
South-east of the square, the Bahia Palace: eight hectares and 150 rooms built by two grand viziers at the end of the nineteenth century and emptied within days of the second one’s death. What remains is a grand courtyard of white marble and zellij under green-tiled galleries, and the studio paints it at siesta with the animal on a green velvet cushion in the middle of it. The scale makes a small animal look extremely important.
Le Jardin Secret Noon
Back north-west, in the Mouassine quarter, a door in a wall opens onto Le Jardin Secret — a Saadian-era palace garden lost for a century and rebuilt to its original plan: four water channels, one basin, a pavilion at the crossing, cypress and citrus in the quarters. Painted at noon from the raised wall, with the medina roofscape and the minaret behind. The stillest scene in the collection.
2 · Koutoubia & Walls
Koutoubia & The Walls
The minaret every other minaret in Morocco was measured against. At dusk the whole rampart turns the colour of a clay oven.
Koutoubia Minaret Last light
Leave the medina by its south-west corner and the Koutoubia is above you: 77 metres of Almohad sandstone, finished around 1195, the tower every other minaret in Morocco was measured against. The studio paints it from a rooftop terrace at the last of the light — rattan chair, silver teapot, a glass of mint tea — with the minaret and the High Atlas going violet behind. The most affectionate composition in the set.
Bab Agnaou Late afternoon
Ten minutes south, at the entrance to the Kasbah, stands the one gate in a city of earth that is carved in stone: Bab Agnaou, around 1188, grey-blue Guéliz sandstone cut in concentric bands of horseshoe, interlace and Kufic script. Painted in raking late-afternoon sun with the animal seated directly beneath the arch, so the rings of carving close around it like the setting of a medal. Big, dignified dogs look as if they were posted there.
The Ramparts Sunset
The walls themselves run nineteen kilometres around the medina — pisé, the local red earth rammed between boards with lime and straw, begun in 1126 and patched in the same earth ever since. The colour of the wall is why the city is called red. Painted at sunset from the sandy path along the outside, with a bicycle leaning, a single palm and the wall going the colour of a clay oven. One wall, one palm, one animal: the simplest composition in the collection.
3 · Majorelle & Gardens
Majorelle & The Gardens
Cobalt walls, bamboo shade, and a blue a painter mixed once and never let go of. The cool quarter of a hot city.
Jardin Majorelle Late morning
Cross into the new town and walk north to the most photographed wall in Morocco. Jacques Majorelle painted his garden this ultramarine in 1937; Yves Saint Laurent bought it in 1980 to save it. Painted in late morning: a studded green door, a yellow pot, the blue running from the ground up, and the animal on the cobalt ledge — usually with an orange scarf, because that is what the blue does to orange. There is no distance in this one. The colour is the setting.
Menara Olive Grove Cold morning
West of the city the Menara is an Almohad water garden from around 1157 — a great basin fed by underground channels from the Atlas, olive groves on every side, a green-roofed pavilion on the far bank. Painted on a cold clear morning with snow on the peaks and the whole range doubled in the water. Our most open scene, the one with the most sky, and the one for a large dog that stands well.
Arsat Moulay Park Late afternoon
Between the medina walls and Guéliz, an eighteenth-century royal orchard — Arsat Moulay Abdeslam — was opened to the city in 2005 with internet points among the trees, which is how a two-hundred-year-old garden came to be called the Cyber Park. Old olives, oranges in winter, straight gravel walks. Painted in late afternoon with the sun coming sideways through the leaves onto pale gravel: the scene built for a black coat.
4 · Gueliz
Gueliz
The new town: wide boulevards, art-deco balconies, café terraces at eye level with the jacaranda trees.
Boulevard Mohammed V Mid-morning
Guéliz is the town the French laid out from 1913 so that the medina could be left alone. Its spine is the avenue now named for Mohammed V: cream art-deco façades, ironwork balconies, café awnings, and jacarandas that turn the whole street purple for a few weeks each spring. Painted mid-morning in flower, with the animal upright on a bistro chair. A lighter, brighter register than the old city; it suits a small, pale, bright-eyed animal.
A Guéliz Café Terrace Warm afternoon
Not a monument. A street-level café terrace in Guéliz at the end of the afternoon: rattan chairs, a striped awning, mint tea poured from a height so it froths, and the Atlas turning pink at the end of the avenue. Painted at the warm end of the afternoon, the sun dropping down the avenue, with the animal sitting on the chair as if waiting to be served — a quietly comic scene, painted completely straight, and the one the studio uses for its before-and-after demonstrations because it shows a face so clearly.
5 · Hivernage & Mamounia
Hivernage & La Mamounia
Walled gardens, palm avenues, and the hotel where Churchill painted. The quarter built for arriving slowly.
La Mamounia Gardens Golden hour
South of Guéliz, inside the walls again, an eighteenth-century sultan gave a walled orchard to his son as a wedding gift; in 1923 a hotel opened on its edge and has been the grand arrival in Marrakech ever since. Churchill painted the Atlas from its terraces. Painted at golden hour from the garden side: a long reflecting pool between white arcades, lanterns lit under the arches, cypress and palms above, the animal at the head of the pool on black-and-white marble. Grand, green and symmetrical.
The Palm Avenue Low sun
Hivernage, the quarter between the walls and the new town, was laid out in the 1920s and 30s for wintering, and its avenues were planted with date palms that have grown into colonnades. Painted with the sun low at the far end so the light comes straight down the tunnel and the dust turns gold, the minaret small at the vanishing point, and the animal walking toward you down the middle. The one scene in the collection built for movement.
6 · La Palmeraie
La Palmeraie
A hundred thousand palms north of the city, watered by channels dug in the twelfth century. Dust, shade, and horses at golden hour.
The Palm Grove End of day
North of the city the oasis begins: the Palmeraie, by tradition a hundred thousand date palms watered by channels dug under the desert nine centuries ago, grown — legend says — from the date stones Almoravid soldiers spat out while they camped here. Thinner than it was, but between the trees still ochre earth, long shadows and the Atlas on the horizon. Painted at the end of the day, the animal standing lit from the side with the whole grove behind. The most cinematic scene we offer.
An Adobe Wall Hard afternoon
And finally no monument at all. Rammed red earth, cracked by heat, patched every generation with the same mud and the same hands — the material most of Marrakech was built from for nine hundred years, and as true a picture of the city as any gate. Painted in hard afternoon light with one palm shadow across the top corner and nothing else in the frame. The absence is the composition: without a landscape to look at, the eye stays on the face.
Choosing
If you still cannot decide.
Choose by the animal before the address. A pale or feathered coat wants the courtyard’s bounced shade; a black coat wants the park’s sideways light or the adobe wall; a cat wants a ledge to sit on — the cobalt one, the garden wall, the bistro chair; a dog that walks well wants the palm avenue; a sighthound wants the ramparts or the grove; a small animal that should look important wants the Bahia courtyard. The photograph decides more than the place does, and the preview is free, so try two.
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