Atar is the capital of the Adrar and the great gateway to the Mauritanian desert. Expeditions leave from here for the heart of the Sahara: the legendary caravan cities, hidden oases, endless dunes and one of the most astonishing geological formations on the planet. If you dream of the Mauritanian desert, everything starts (and ends) here, in this dusty, welcoming town at the foot of the Adrar plateau.
Atar itself is a modest town, with a bustling market, an old French colonial fort, tea rooms and stone and mud-brick houses. Its real value lies in what surrounds it and what it makes possible. From Atar you can arrange the 4x4s, guides and camel caravans that take you to Chinguetti, the 'Sorbonne of the Sahara', with its medieval libraries; to Ouadane, the stone caravan city; to the cool shade of the Terjit oasis; to the giant Eye of the Sahara, visible from space; and to the great dunes of the Adrar.
This guide takes a practical look at Atar: what to see in town and, above all, how to use it as a base for the big trip through the Adrar. We explain how to get there (including the seasonal charter flights from Europe), how to hire a 4x4 and a guide, how to connect with the iron ore train at Choum, and what to expect from a region that holds the most spectacular sights in Mauritania: the desert in its purest form and the living memory of the Saharan caravans.
Atar is a relatively young town, tied first to the caravans and later to colonialism. It began as a service and meeting point on the routes that crossed the Adrar. For centuries this plateau was a key crossroads of trans-Saharan trade (gold, salt, slaves, dates and Islamic learning) and the birthplace of holy cities such as Chinguetti and Ouadane. In the early 20th century, France occupied the Adrar (around 1909) and set up a fort and an administrative centre in Atar, which drove its growth as a regional capital. After independence, and later with desert tourism, Atar became the main base for exploring the Mauritanian Sahara. Its history, and that of the Adrar, is covered on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Adrar plateau is the soul of Mauritania: this is where the Almoravids were born, at Azougui, and where you find the holy cities of Chinguetti and Ouadane with their manuscripts, the oases and the enigmatic Eye of the Sahara.
Read the history of The Adrar, heart of the desert →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
To understand Atar, you have to understand the Adrar, the rocky plateau at whose foot the town stands. For centuries, the Adrar was one of the great crossroads of the trans-Saharan routes, the trading arteries that crossed the desert and linked the Mediterranean Maghreb with sub-Saharan Africa to the south. Camel caravans travelled these tracks loaded with desert salt, gold from the western Sudan, dates, textiles, copper, slaves and, above all, culture and religion: Islam spread across West Africa largely through these routes and the towns that dotted them.
Some of the most important caravan towns of the Saharan world flourished in the Adrar. Chinguetti, founded around the 13th century, became a great centre of pilgrimage and Islamic learning. It came to be considered the seventh holy city of Islam and gave its name ('Bilad Chinguetti', the land of Chinguetti) to the whole region that is now Mauritania. Ouadane, a little further east, was another powerful hub of the gold and salt trade. With their mosques, their manuscript libraries and their stone architecture, these towns were beacons of civilisation in the desert.
In that context, the place where Atar stands today was just one more point in the Adrar's network of oases, wells and tracks: a place with water where people passed through, tied to the nomadic life of the Moors, the camel herders and traders who dominated the region. The town of Atar as we know it is younger than the great medieval ksour, and its rise is linked above all to the arrival of French colonialism and, much later, of tourism.
In the early 20th century, France was expanding across West Africa and set its sights on the Adrar, a strategic and still untamed region controlled by the Moorish tribes. After several military campaigns, French troops occupied the Adrar around 1909, in a hard conquest that the local population resisted. To consolidate their control, the French set up a fort and an administrative centre in Atar, taking advantage of its position at the foot of the plateau, its water supply and its role as a junction of tracks.
That decision transformed Atar. From being just one more point in the Adrar, it became the administrative capital of the region under colonial rule, the seat of French military and civil power in the area. The town grew up around the fort and the administration: official buildings went up, trade was organised, and Atar established itself as the main urban centre of the Mauritanian desert, ahead even of old holy cities such as Chinguetti, whose commercial importance had been fading as the caravan routes declined.
The decline of the caravans was, in fact, one of the great changes of the period. Colonisation, new borders, modern transport and the end of certain trades (such as the trans-Saharan gold trade and, officially, the slave trade) gradually drained the old desert routes of their purpose. Towns such as Chinguetti and Ouadane fell into decline and were largely swallowed by the sand, while Atar, the new colonial capital, took over as the administrative heart of the Adrar.
When Mauritania became independent in 1960, Atar kept its role as capital of the Adrar region within the new state. The town remained the administrative, commercial and service centre for the vast desert of the country's north-central area, a meeting point between traditional nomadic life and the new reality of an independent nation run from Nouakchott.
The following decades brought Atar the same challenges as the rest of the Sahel: the terrible droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, which devastated nomadic herding and pushed many desert people to settle in towns; uneven modernisation; and the hard economy of an arid, remote region. Atar grew with the arrival of former nomads and through its role as regional capital, though at a much slower pace than sprawling Nouakchott.
At the same time, the Adrar kept its enormous heritage: in 1996 the caravan towns of Chinguetti and Ouadane, and further east Tichitt and Oualata, were listed by UNESCO as World Heritage ('Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata'), in recognition of their historical role as centres of trade and Islamic culture in the Sahara. That heritage, together with the spectacular desert landscapes, would become the basis of a new chapter for Atar: tourism.
From the last decades of the 20th century, and especially around the turn of the millennium, the Adrar opened up to desert tourism. Its attractions were first-rate: the legendary caravan towns with their medieval libraries, oases such as Terjit, the great dunes, and one of the most astonishing geological formations on the planet, the Eye of the Sahara or Guelb er Richat, a 40 km ring of rock visible from space. As the region's capital and logistics base, Atar became the gateway for this adventure and desert tourism.
In the boom years, there were even direct charter flights from Europe, especially from France, to Atar airport, bringing travellers in the winter season who were eager for the Sahara, camel caravans and nights under the stars. Atar enjoyed a golden age of tourism, with auberges, guides and specialist operators. The business took heavy blows from security problems in the Sahel (the rise of jihadism and kidnappings in the region from the late 2000s), which led many countries to advise against travel and sank the sector for a while.
Over the years, and thanks to security efforts, tourism in the Adrar has been recovering, and once again there are seasonal flights and tours that take travellers through Chinguetti, Ouadane, Terjit and the Eye of the Sahara, with Atar as their base. The town is still the essential base camp for anyone who wants to discover the Mauritanian desert in all its grandeur.
Today Atar is a modest but vital town: the capital of the Adrar, the main logistics centre of the Mauritanian desert and the threshold that almost every traveller crosses on the way to the heart of the country's Sahara. In its dusty streets, its market, its auberges and its agencies, people organise the expeditions to the region's wonders, and the worlds that define Mauritania meet: desert nomads and traders, the colonial legacy, and travellers from far away.
Atar doesn't have the drama of Chinguetti or the Eye of the Sahara, nor the great monuments of other historic towns; its value lies in its role and its people. It's where you stock up, hire a guide, climb into the 4x4 and get ready for the adventure, or where you come back covered in dust after days in the desert. It's also the link to the iron ore train at the nearby station of Choum, which connects the Adrar with the Atlantic coast.
A young town born at the crossroads of the caravan routes, a capital created by the colonial administration, a survivor of droughts and of the ups and downs of tourism, Atar plays the role of threshold: it isn't the final destination, but the door that opens onto the Sahara at its grandest. For the traveller, crossing Atar means crossing the threshold of one of the most intense experiences Africa has to offer: the Mauritanian desert, with its holy cities, its oases, its dunes and its endless silence. And all of that adventure, without fail, starts here.
