Ouarzazate is the great gateway to southern Morocco, the place where the High Atlas opens out onto deserts, oases and valleys of mud-brick kasbahs. It lies on the other side of the mountains from Marrakech, and almost every route into the Sahara starts here: to the dunes of Merzouga and Zagora, to the lush Draa Valley and to the 'road of a thousand kasbahs' through the Dades and the Todra. Its name in Berber is said to mean 'without noise' or 'without confusion', and you can still feel some of that desert-frontier calm in its wide streets and huge horizon.
But Ouarzazate has a second life that has made it famous worldwide: it is Morocco's Hollywood. The very clear southern light, the desert, mountain and adobe-kasbah landscapes, and low production costs have made the city and its surroundings one of the world's great open-air film sets. Huge studios stand here, Atlas Studios and CLA among them, and legendary productions have filmed on these sets and in this landscape. They range from 'Lawrence of Arabia' to 'Gladiator' and from 'The Jewel of the Nile' to 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. 'Game of Thrones' also filmed here and turned nearby Aït Ben Haddou into the city of Yunkai.
This guide covers the essentials of Ouarzazate from a practical angle. It explains how to visit the film studios and the historic Kasbah of Taourirt, how to organise a desert or valley trip from here, and how to use the city as a base for the unmissable ksar of Aït Ben Haddou. One useful note: Ouarzazate is more of a starting point and service hub than a monumental destination in its own right. Its real value lies in its strategic location, its film industry, and its role as a springboard to some of Morocco's most dazzling landscapes.
The Ouarzazate region has been home to Berber communities since ancient times. For centuries it was a crossroads on the caravan routes that crossed the Atlas to trade between northern Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa. Salt, gold, dates, spices and slaves passed through these valleys, which are dotted with kasbahs and ksour (fortified adobe villages). The most important checkpoint in the area was the Kasbah of Taourirt. In the 18th and 19th centuries it became a stronghold of the powerful El Glaoui family, the 'lords of the Atlas', who ruled southern Morocco by allying with the central government and later with the French protectorate authorities. Modern Ouarzazate, however, is largely a 20th-century creation. From 1928 the French built it up as an administrative and military post (a Legion garrison) to control the south, which explains its orderly layout and wide avenues, unusual in Morocco. After independence in 1956, the city grew as a provincial capital and service centre for the south. Two engines drove its big boom. The first was cinema: from the 1960s and 1970s filmmakers found a natural set here, and large studios eventually followed (Atlas Studios was founded in 1983). The second, more recent, is solar power, with the Noor Ouarzazate complex on the outskirts, one of the largest concentrated solar plants in the world, which began opening in 2016. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Morocco of mud-brick kasbahs, caravan routes and dunes: Ouarzazate and its film capital, the ksar of Ait Ben Haddou, the dunes of Merzouga in the Sahara, the palm groves of the Draa and the Dades and the Todra gorges, land of the Amazigh of the Atlas.
Read the history of The south, the Atlas and the Sahara desert →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. There are not many in Uarzazate, but the ones there are worth it. Tap the cards below and have a look.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before there were film studios or avenues laid out by the French, the Ouarzazate region was already a hub of life in southern Morocco. Inhabited since ancient times by Berber (Amazigh) peoples, it lay at the crossroads of the great caravan routes linking the heart of Morocco (Marrakech, Fez) with the Sahara Desert and, beyond it, sub-Saharan Africa.
For centuries, camel caravans loaded with salt, gold, dates, leather, spices and also slaves passed through these arid valleys between the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, in a trans-Saharan trade that made those who controlled the passes rich. Over time the landscape filled with ksour (fortified villages) and adobe kasbahs, the raw-earth citadels that defended the oases and checkpoints. The name 'Ouarzazate' itself is usually read, from Berber, as 'without noise' or 'without confusion', perhaps referring to a quiet, open place or to a safe crossing point.
In this world of caravans, every oasis and every gorge had its local lord, and alliances and rivalries between Berber families decided who collected the tolls and who protected (or robbed) the merchants. Out of that web came the power that would rule the region in the following centuries: the house of the Glaoua.
The monument that best tells Ouarzazate's past is the Kasbah of Taourirt, an imposing adobe citadel built and extended mainly between the 18th and 19th centuries. Taourirt was one of the strongholds of the El Glaoui family (the Glaoua), a Berber dynasty that came to control much of southern Morocco and the Atlas passes.
The rise of the Glaoua is one of the most fascinating stories of modern Morocco. Their power soared at the end of the 19th century when they came to the aid of Sultan Moulay Hassan I, who was trapped with his army in the Atlas: in gratitude, the sultan showered them with weapons and privileges, including valuable artillery that made them the most powerful family in the region. From their kasbahs (Telouet, Taourirt) they controlled the caravans and governed vast territories. The most famous of them all, Thami El Glaoui, became Pasha of Marrakech and a key figure in the country in the 20th century.
The Glaoua played both sides with cunning and cruelty: from 1912 they allied themselves with the authorities of the French protectorate, which let them keep and expand their hold over the south in exchange for serving colonial interests. Thami El Glaoui even led the plot that in 1953 temporarily deposed Sultan Mohammed V. That move would bring about his downfall: when the sultan returned in triumph and Morocco headed towards independence, the power of the 'lords of the Atlas' collapsed, and Thami died in 1956, the very year of independence, discredited as a collaborator with the French.
The Ouarzazate that travellers walk through today, with its wide avenues and orderly layout, so different from the maze of traditional medinas, is largely a creation of the 20th century and French colonialism. Until then, the area was a scattering of villages and kasbahs around the oases; there was no city as such.
From 1928, in the middle of the protectorate, the French developed Ouarzazate as an administrative and military post. They set up a garrison here, including the Foreign Legion, to control the rebellious and strategic south of the country, which was still being 'pacified', and as a base from which to govern the region. That is where the city's rational planning and broad streets come from: unusual in Morocco and a direct legacy of its origins as a colonial outpost.
After Moroccan independence in 1956, Ouarzazate remained a provincial capital and the main service centre for the whole south: the place with a hospital, administration, market and transport that people from the valleys and oases of a vast region came to. Its position as a crossroads (gateway to the desert, junction of the routes to the Draa, the Dades and the Tafilalet) made it an essential hub, although for decades it remained a modest, dusty frontier town.
The big turning point in Ouarzazate's fortunes came with cinema. From the mid-20th century, major directors found in the landscapes of southern Morocco (deserts, mountains, adobe kasbahs, crystal-clear skies) an unbeatable and inexpensive natural setting for shooting historical, biblical and adventure epics. David Lean filmed part of 'Lawrence of Arabia' (1962) in the region, and from then on the trickle of productions never stopped growing.
In 1983 the Atlas Film Studios were founded, and over time they became one of the largest outdoor filming complexes in the world, later joined by the CLA Studios. Dozens of blockbusters have been shot in and around Ouarzazate: 'The Jewel of the Nile', Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ', 'Kundun', 'The Mummy', 'Gladiator', 'Babel', 'Kingdom of Heaven', and series such as 'Game of Thrones' and 'Prison Break', among many, many others. Nearby Aït Ben Haddou, a World Heritage Site, is probably the most filmed natural set in the country.
This industry transformed the city's economy and fame, earning it the nickname 'Hollywood of Morocco' or 'Hollywood of the desert'. Thousands of people from the region work as technicians, extras and set builders, and the studios have also become a tourist attraction you can visit.
In recent decades, Ouarzazate has added a new cutting-edge role to its status as gateway to the desert and film capital. Taking advantage of its location in one of the sunniest regions on the planet, Morocco chose its surroundings to build the Noor solar complex, one of the largest concentrated solar power plants in the world, opened in phases from 2016.
Noor, whose name means 'light' in Arabic, is a symbol of the country's ambitious commitment to renewable energy and to reducing its dependence on imported fuels. Thousands of parabolic mirrors and a central tower capture the desert sun to generate electricity, in a futuristic landscape that contrasts sharply with the mud kasbahs and camel caravans nearby.
So today's Ouarzazate is a city of fascinating contrasts: the city of caravan trade and the lords of the Atlas; of French colonial planning; of film sets recreating Rome, Egypt or Westeros; and of state-of-the-art solar power. Above all, it is still the great springboard of southern Morocco: the place from which travellers set off for the dunes of Merzouga, the palm groves of the Draa, the Todra gorges and some of the most dazzling landscapes in all of North Africa. A gateway, in short, to the desert and to the imagination.
