Taroudant
A Souss Valley Market Town Inside Roughly 7 Km Of Continuous Earthen Ramparts, Often Called Little Marrakesh For Its Walls And Souks, And Briefly A Saadian Capital In The Sixteenth Century · Taroudant, Souss-Massa
Taroudant is a working market town on the Souss plain inside an almost complete ring of earthen ramparts, and the walls are the reason to stop. They run for a distance commonly quoted at around 7 km: pink-brown rammed earth buttressed every few metres, pierced by five gates, with a road outside them that at the right hour gives one of the best half-hours in southern Morocco. Inside is not a museum. Two souks, one called the Arab and one the Berber, trade silver, argan, spices, oranges and secondhand everything for people who live here, and the visitor trade is a sideline rather than the business. The town was briefly a Saadian base in the early sixteenth century before the dynasty moved north to Marrakesh, and it has been the market for the whole Souss valley ever since. It is often sold as little Marrakesh, which oversells it badly. Honest caveats: it is far smaller with much less to actually enter, a day and a night is the right length, parts of the wall are eroded or patched in cement, and the Souss plain in midsummer is brutally hot.
Walled market town in the Souss valley on the N10, about 80 km east of Agadir, with the Arab and Berber souks inside the ramparts, Taroudant, Souss-Massa, Morocco
The ramparts, the gates and the squares have no opening hours and cost nothing, and the circuit of the walls is best in the hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset. The two souks keep market hours, broadly early morning to about 13:00 and again from mid-afternoon to about 20:00, with Friday midday quiet for prayers and some stalls shut; the fresh produce end is a morning business while the craft end stays open later. The tanneries outside the walls work in the morning. There is no monument here with a ticket desk, which is part of the character and also the reason some visitors leave disappointed. Getting there: no railway, and coaches and shared grand taxis come from Agadir in roughly 1 to 1.5 hours, from Marrakesh in about 4 hours by motorway through Agadir or 5 to 6 slow hours over the Tizi n'Test pass. Nothing needs booking but a room in high season - confirm current times.