The 5 Sunsets That Made Me Stay in Marrakech

The first sunset that really got me was from a riad rooftop in the medina in 2016. I'd been in Marrakech for about eight months, going through the difficult second phase of adaptation — the bureaucracy, the loneliness of the language barrier, the feeling that maybe I'd made a mistake. Then a friend took me up to his roof with a thermos of mint tea and we watched the light go gold and then deep orange and then violet over the Atlas Mountains in the distance and the Koutoubia Mosque in the middle ground. I didn't say anything. He didn't either. I think we both knew something had shifted.

Here are the five sunsets that defined my relationship with this city.

What is the best rooftop for sunset in the medina?

Nomad restaurant, top floor, facing west. Arrive at 5:30 PM in winter (it goes down fast) or 6:45 PM in summer. Sit at the edge. Order the house lemonade with ginger — 28 MAD — and a plate of olives. The view frames the Koutoubia to the left, the medina rooftops in the middle, and the first hints of Atlas on clear days to the south.

The thing about this sunset is the sound. You're high enough to hear the city differently: the call to prayer echoing across the rooftops, the distant Gnawa music from the square, the swallows that circle the minaret at dusk. It's complete.

Best time: 365 days a year, this works. But the absolute peak is late October and early November when the Atlas has its first snow cap and the air is crystal clear.

What is the best sunset experience in the Agafay Desert?

About 40 km from Marrakech, the Agafay Desert plateau has a quality of light at sunset that I've never seen anywhere else. The landscape is rocky and lunar — it looks like the moon — and the light hits it at golden hour in a way that makes everything glow amber.

I've watched the Agafay sunset from three contexts: from a luxury glamping camp (genuinely spectacular, around 800–1,200 MAD per night), from a basic camp with local guides (200 MAD, rough, extraordinary), and from a friend's 4x4 parked on a ridge. The last one was the best because there was nobody else around for kilometers.

Time: the sunset here hits at the same time as the city, but the landscape makes it feel longer. Budget two hours: arrive 90 minutes before sunset, stay 30 minutes after. The stars that follow are a different category of experience entirely.

Where is the El Fenn terrace and why does it matter?

El Fenn is a boutique hotel in the medina — in the Arset el Maach neighborhood — and its terrace is one of the genuinely great sunset spots in the city. It's hotel guests and guests of the restaurant, so not free to access. A drink at the bar runs 80–120 MAD. But what you get is a curated sunset: comfortable seating, excellent cocktails, the sound of their pool below, and a 360-degree view of the old city.

I had the sunset of my 35th birthday here. A friend booked the terrace for a small group of us. There was a musician playing oud in the corner. The sun went down behind the Palmeraie and the city lit up amber and gold all at once. I understood that evening why people spend their entire lives here.

What is the Atlas Mountain sunset like?

The best version of this requires a car and about 90 minutes of driving. Take the Ourika Valley road south from Marrakech until you hit the mountain pass at Tizi n'Tamatert, or continue to the Ourika Valley lookout above Setti Fadma. Park. Face west.

At sunset from elevation in the Atlas, you watch the light change on the plains below — you can see Marrakech itself in the distance, the red ochre of the city catching the last light. Meanwhile, around you, the mountains go from gold to pink to purple. It's the inverse of the city sunset: here you're above it all.

I do this drive maybe four times a year. Usually alone, with music playing, and I always bring a thermos of coffee from home because there's nothing worth buying on the road at that specific altitude.

What is the secret Medina rooftop sunset?

This one I'm not going to give a specific address for — not to be precious about it, but because the whole value of these spots is that they're not on any guide. What I'll say is this: in the Mouassine neighborhood and the area around Rue Dar el Bacha, there are private riads that occasionally do rooftop evenings through word-of-mouth invitation. The sunset from a private riad with no other tourists, mint tea from the family kitchen, and the call to prayer starting exactly as the light changes — that's the experience that doesn't have a price.

You find these through relationships, not platforms. Start building your network in the city and within a year, someone will take you to a rooftop that will ruin every other sunset for you.

Which Marrakech sunset should you see first?

Nomad's rooftop. It's accessible, consistently excellent, and gives you the context — the Koutoubia, the medina, the Atlas in the distance — to understand what you're looking at when you see the more private versions later. After that: Agafay, as soon as you can. The city sunsets are beautiful. The desert sunset teaches you something about light that changes how you see everything else.