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Map of Marrakech
From above, the medina of Marrakech is a maze enclosed by a wall: thousands of alleys that twist, branch and end at a gate. Few maps have such a dense pattern.
What you see on the map
The medina. The city founded by the Almoravids in the eleventh century, surrounded by red rammed-earth walls with their gates, the babs. Inside are the derbs: dead-end alleys that branch like the roots of a tree.
The souks. North of the great square, the commercial heart, with covered streets crossing in no order, forming the tightest part of the pattern on the map.
Jemaa el-Fna and the Koutoubia. The square, a large irregular void in the middle of the medina, and beside it the minaret of the Koutoubia, with its gardens.
The kasbah and the palace. To the south, the royal precinct, with straighter streets, the Bahia and El Badi palaces and the gardens; outside the walls, to the north-west, Gueliz, the new town, with avenues laid out with a ruler.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:15,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, covers 4 km: the whole medina with its wall. The alleys are still drawn one by one.
1:6,000 on A3 moves in on the souks or the mellah, the old Jewish quarter, and every derb can be followed to its end.
In sepia, as here, the map takes on the colour of the city's earth; in coral, that of its walls.
Make it yours
Open the example and move the frame: the Menara and Agdal gardens, with their pools and gridded orchards, deserve a map of their own.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, coral, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
