Marrakesh takes its nickname, the Red City, from the rust-toned clay walls and buildings that have defined its skyline since the Almoravid dynasty founded it in 1070. Local building codes still require most structures in the medina to be finished in that same reddish-pink hue, keeping a thousand-year-old colour scheme intact even as the city has grown far beyond its ancient walls.

At its heart sits Jemaa el-Fnaa, one of the busiest and most theatrical public squares in Africa, a UNESCO-recognised space that transforms completely between day and night. By afternoon it’s snake charmers, orange juice stalls, and henna artists; by evening it becomes an open-air, torch-lit food market, with dozens of stalls serving Moroccan street food to a mix of locals and travellers late into the night.

A Medina Built to Get Lost In

Marrakesh’s medina, its historic walled old town, is a genuine labyrinth, narrow alleyways branching without any obvious logic, deliberately disorienting to outsiders and once useful for confusing invading armies as much as modern tourists. Within it, the souks are organised loosely by trade: leatherworkers in one quarter, metalworkers in another, dyers’ alleys running with colour from vats of natural pigment.

The city’s gardens offer a cooler counterpoint to the medina’s intensity, the Majorelle Garden, restored and later owned by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, is famous for its own specific, saturated shade of cobalt blue, a deliberate contrast to the red city surrounding it.

Painting Ochre and Shadow

The warm red-ochre tones of Marrakesh’s walls, set against sharp desert light and shadow, give a watercolourist a rich, distinctive palette to work with. We’ve captured that warmth in our own Marrakesh Morocco Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Morocco for a wall at home.

Part medieval trading post, part modern cultural capital, Marrakesh has spent nearly a thousand years balancing its ancient red walls against whatever new life keeps finding its way inside them.