What to expect in Ait Benhaddou: Tips from our 2-night stay

What even is Ait Benhaddou?

Ait Benhaddou is a fortified town, called a Ksar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, that was an important historic trade post on the caravan route between Marrakesh and the Sahara Desert.

But you might have heard of Ait Benhaddou as the filming location of Outer Banks, Game of Thrones, The Mummy, and Gladiator. This whole area around Ouarzazate is frequently used as a film set for popular movies.

In this part of Morocco, especially the Ounila Valley in which Ait Benhaddou is located, you will find many such fortified towns and historic kasbahs. Ait Benhaddou is the most fascinating fortified town of them all.

Good to know: Compared to a fortified town like Ait Benhaddou, a Kasbah is a completely different thing, as it’s a kind of palace in which the powerful leaders, noble families, and other high-ranking persons lived.

How to get to Ait Benhaddou

Ait Benhaddou is located about a 3.5-hour drive from Marrakesh (180 km) through the Atlas Mountains over Tizi N Tichka, the highest mountain pass in Morocco.

It’s just a 35-minute drive from Ouarzazate (30 km), which also has an international airport with seasonal direct flights from Paris, Barcelona, and Marseille, as well as a domestic flight from Casablanca.

Visiting Ait Benhaddou is easy on a day trip from Marrakesh if you rent a car or join a guided tour that visits the Ksar and Ouarzazate. It’s also a part of the popular 3-day desert tour between Fes and Marrakesh.

After renting a car in Marrakesh, we first visited Ouzoud Waterfalls, then the Iminifri Natural Bridge, and finally reached Ait Benhaddou on the way to the desert in Merzouga. This was all part of our big Morocco road trip.

Is there a ticket?

To our surprise, Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO site, is free to visit. Yes, that’s true. You don’t need to pay for a ticket to see this fascinating historical site. But it all depends on how you enter the fortified town.

Walking over the big bridge leading directly to Ait Benhaddou is free, and you don’t need to pay anything to enter the town.

However, if you go over the small bridge down at the riverbed, you need to pay if you enter the town through the Kasbah Museum.

You can still enter for free over the small bridge, but only if you turn right and walk around the gardens. You can also go left from this point to reach the big bridge.

We also saw locals walking this exact route around the gardens, including one shop owner, who we saw here in the early morning and again at sunset, when we left the town together.

Take a look at the entry directions we drew in the photo below.

We used the small bridge over the water a few times during our visit, and it’s actually quite a cool little area to explore, so we had no problem with that short detour. Plus, it gives you another perspective of the Ksar.

Our favorite spots in and around the Ksar

There isn’t really a list of things you should do in Ait Benhaddou. However, here are some of the spots we liked the most.

Picturesque street leading to the town

On the way to the Ksar from the main road, if you take this one specific street, you reach a very picturesque path that leads towards Ait Benhaddou. It’s our favorite view of the ksar, which we passed many times, but it looked its best just after sunrise.

Hill viewpoint

For a close-up view of the whole Ksar, the hill right next to it is unmissable. We were there in the early morning, just after sunrise, and the soft colors made the town look even more fascinating.

Coffee and tea with a panoramic view

We really enjoyed our visit to La Table de la Kasbah, a restaurant and cafe with the best panoramic view.

It’s located at a high point right in the Ksar and offers great views of the Ksar itself and the surrounding area.

We had coffee and tea here all alone, minus the cute cat, in the morning, just as they opened. The prices are a bit higher, but we were okay with that, as the coffee and tea came with an incredible view.

Fortified hilltop

While the cafe has great views, for even better views of the whole area, we hiked up to the Granary, the highest point of Ait Benhaddou. It’s the best spot for sunset as well.

Small bridge over the river

However, we spent the most time of our three visits down at the small bridge over the river.

There, we got some of the best photos of Ait Benhaddou, and it’s also where you can get the best perspective of the fortified town, with the historic buildings in the foreground and the high hill above it.

Where to eat good food

Unfortunately, from the reviews we read of restaurants in the area, the value for money, especially considering the taste, is supposedly not there. Especially compared to other places in Morocco.

However, we are happy to say we found some good places with delicious food in Ait Benhaddou, even though the options didn’t look great at first.

In addition to the delicious dinner and breakfast at Kasbah Ounila, where we stayed, we enjoyed lunch at Restaurant Tighramte, a low-key restaurant with incredible views of the Ksar, and we also ate delicious wraps at Snack tizi fastfood, on the main road through the town.

Time needed for visiting Ait Benhaddou

In reality, a day trip from Marrakesh to Ait Benhaddou is perfectly enough time to see the ksar, as it’s really not that big of a place. And if you’re not driving, a guided tour makes this super easy and gives you enough time to explore it properly.

Staying overnight in Ait Benhaddou means you can have a more relaxing time and visit other interesting places in the area.

We spent two nights in Ait Benhaddou, which allowed us to visit at both sunrise and sunset and have a more relaxing time without the midday crowds. And we even squeezed in a third visit for sunrise on our last morning just before leaving. 

Plus, having two nights in Ait Benhaddou allowed us to visit nearby spots we otherwise couldn’t, like Fint Oasis and other parts of the Ounila Valley.

Originally, we were supposed to visit those places on the way to Todra (our next road trip destination), but that wouldn’t be possible unless we stayed in a hotel in the area. Happy we did.

Where we stayed & our hotel recommendations

We decided to stay in Kasbah Ounila, a kasbah hotel only a 10-minute drive from Ait Benhaddou. We’re so happy we decided to book a Kasbah hotel, as it was very interesting to stay in such a building.

While the building is only about 20 years old, it was built and decorated in a traditional style that was used in the past. Stunning!

Before we booked our Kasbah hotel, we also looked at a few other top-rated hotels. We liked Dar Mouna in the center of town, with a pool and a terrace overlooking the town. Inside the Ksar, there are only a few hotels, and the one we looked at was Kasbah El Hajja, which has superb reviews.

Since we arrived at the hotel quite late for check-in on the first day, we arranged a dinner in advance, which was delicious.

Looking back, this was possibly one of the best Tagines and Couscous we had during our more than 1-month trip to Morocco. The lemon cooked on top of the Tagine was a game-changer (might consider adding this to our cooking).

Our room at Kasbah Ounila was in a kind of tower-like structure on the rooftop, which was SO COOL. It was a small room, but very well designed, making it comfortable for our stay.

The highlight of our stay at this hotel was definitely the rooftop breakfast, because the views were so stunning.

There were also different rooms downstairs on the lower terrace, where we enjoyed our first breakfast. There is also a larger shared dining space inside the building where we had dinner.

We loved our stay here, as it was super cozy with a great atmosphere. Plus, it was quiet, as there aren’t that many rooms.

What we saw nearby

A perfect little day trip out of Ait Benhaddou we did was to Fint Oasis, an oasis in the true sense of the word. It’s a beautiful natural spot, about a 50-minute drive south, past the city of Ouarzazate.

The thing we loved most at Fint Oasis was the peaceful atmosphere and the beautiful views of the water, palm trees, and the rocky hills above.

Plus, we got to see a lot of turtles swimming and sunbathing on the rocks across the water. And we even saw a small animal, which we think was a type of squirrel, running down the steep rocks to drink water.

We decided we weren’t going to explore the whole area of Fint Oasis.

Instead, we walked around the northern part of the shore and didn’t go down to one of the villages, as we came only for the oasis part. We’re happy with our choice, as there were barely any people here, and we enjoyed a leisurely stroll around.

On the way back from Fint Oasis, we also stopped at a viewpoint of the Tifoultoute Kasbah, which looked cool when we passed it on the road. But while writing this article, we realized that it’s actually a hotel. How cool is that?