☰Medina

The Medina is the walled old city of Marrakesh and the reason most people come. At its heart is Jemaa el-Fnaa, the vast square that transforms from a daytime market of juice sellers and snake charmers into a nightly open-air food court of smoke and spectacle. Radiating outward are the souks, a seemingly endless network of covered alleys organised loosely by trade: leather here, metalwork there, spices further on. Riads, traditional courtyard houses converted into guesthouses, hide behind plain doors in the labyrinthine residential quarters. Navigation is deliberately confusing, and getting lost is inevitable and arguably the point. The sensory overload is real, as are the persistent touts, but the Medina rewards patience with moments of extraordinary beauty: a tiled fountain, a shaft of light through a lattice, silence in a courtyard.