Destination
The gateway to the south, the Atlas film studios, and the fortified ksar that has stood in for half the ancient world on screen.
Routes
2 routes go through here.
Ait Ben Haddou is the one everybody photographs — a ksar of packed earth stacked up a hillside above the Ounila river, UNESCO-listed since 1987, and the backdrop to more films than its residents can list. We cross on foot and climb to the granary at the top, which takes about twenty minutes and is worth it for the view back down the valley rather than for the granary.
Ouarzazate itself has the Taourirt kasbah and the Atlas studios, and it is where the road divides: north over the Tizi n'Tichka to Marrakech, or east along the road of a thousand kasbahs towards the Dades and the desert.
The earth architecture here needs replastering every few years or the rain takes it. Some of what you are looking at is genuinely centuries old and some was rebuilt last decade, and locals will tell you which is which if you ask.
