Overview
Most visitors to Marrakech spend the majority of their time in the medina, which is understandable — it is one of the most extraordinary urban environments in the world. But Marrakech is also a city of two halves, and the half that sits outside the ancient walls — the Ville Nouvelle, of which Gueliz is the commercial and cultural heart — is a genuinely different city worth several hours of any itinerary.
Gueliz offers what the medina does not: wide, navigable streets, contemporary Moroccan restaurants that serve alcohol, art galleries, design boutiques, and the best concentration of international-quality cafés in southern Morocco. Its art deco and modernist buildings from the 1920s to 1950s have an elegance that is easy to overlook but becomes more apparent the more time you spend there. And it contains Marrakech's single most-visited attraction — Jardin Majorelle — alongside the world-class Musée Yves Saint Laurent, which opened in 2017.
Gueliz is also the practical side of Marrakech: the train station, most of the city's banks and pharmacies, the central market, and the supermarkets are all here. Many visitors who stay in the medina's riads pass through Gueliz on arrival or departure without spending any real time in it. That is worth correcting.
History
Gueliz takes its name from the Jbel Gueliz, a rocky limestone outcrop that rises to the west of the city and was used as a military observation point. When the French Protectorate was established in Morocco in 1912, the colonial administration faced a choice that urban planners had faced in other colonial contexts: demolish or supplement the existing city. In Marrakech, as in Fes and Rabat, the French Resident-General Hubert Lyautey made the decision to build a new European city alongside the medina rather than within it.
The man Lyautey charged with designing it was Henri Prost, a Beaux-Arts-trained urban planner who went on to influence urban planning doctrine internationally. Prost's Marrakech plan — drawn up from 1912 onward — established the principles: a broad central boulevard (today's Avenue Mohammed V) running southwest to northeast, a grid of secondary streets, planting to provide shade, and a deliberate buffer zone between the Ville Nouvelle and the medina walls. The result was a city of wide, tree-lined avenues, low-rise buildings with arcaded ground floors, and an ordered calm that was the deliberate counterpoint to the medina's deliberate complexity.
The buildings that filled Prost's grid through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s reflect the architecture of the period: Mauresque (a colonial fusion of French modernism and Moroccan ornamental tradition), art deco with North African inflections, and stripped classical. Much of this fabric survives, giving Gueliz a genuine architectural character that rewards walking slowly with your eyes up.
After Moroccan independence in 1956, Gueliz grew rapidly as a commercial and residential district for the Marrakchi middle class. Today it is the commercial spine of a city of over a million people, its population far exceeding the medina's, its cafés and restaurants the meeting places of contemporary urban Morocco.
Jardin Majorelle
The most-visited site in Marrakech — more visited than Jemaa el-Fna by some counts — Jardin Majorelle is at once a botanical garden, a design object, a pilgrimage site, and an almost surreal escape from the city outside its walls. It repays a visit even if you have seen it in a hundred photographs.
Jacques Majorelle and the garden's creation
The garden was created by Jacques Majorelle (1886–1962), a French orientalist painter who came to Marrakech in 1919 for his health and stayed for the rest of his life. From 1923 he began transforming the land around his studio villa into a botanical garden, planting it with species from five continents — bamboo, cacti, bougainvillea, palm palms, lotus — and designing the paths, pools, and pergolas himself over four decades of obsessive work.
The colour that defines the garden — an intense, luminous cobalt blue — was Majorelle's own invention, developed specifically for the studio and outbuildings and now known internationally as Majorelle Blue. Against the ochre of Marrakech and the green of the planting, it is one of those colour combinations that should clash and instead achieves something close to perfection. The garden opened to the public in 1947; Majorelle himself guided visitors.
Yves Saint Laurent and the rescue
Majorelle died in 1962 following a car accident. The garden fell into decline and by 1980 was threatened with redevelopment into a tourist complex. In that year, fashion designers Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé bought the property and began a meticulous restoration. They maintained and expanded the botanical collection, restored the electric blue, and made Marrakech a central part of their lives — Saint Laurent spent several months there each year for the rest of his life.
When Yves Saint Laurent died in 2008, his ashes were scattered in the garden at a rose planted in his memory in the northwest corner — a spot still marked by a Roman column. Pierre Bergé died in 2017, the same year the Musée Yves Saint Laurent opened adjacent to the garden. Both men's connection to Marrakech was profound and long-lasting; the garden's continued excellence is their legacy as much as Majorelle's.
Visiting the garden
The garden covers roughly one hectare and takes 45–60 minutes to walk through properly. The Berber Museum (Musée Berbère), housed in Majorelle's original studio building — the most intensely blue structure in the garden — contains an excellent collection of Amazigh jewellery, textiles, ceramics, and clothing from across Morocco's Berber-speaking regions. It is included in the garden entry price and worth at least 30 minutes.
Admission is around 150 MAD for the garden plus Berber Museum; an additional ticket is needed for the YSL Museum (adjacent, separate entry). Book online in advance — the garden has timed entry slots and sells out entirely on busy days, particularly in spring. The garden opens daily from 8am; the first slot is the least crowded and the light is best.
Musée Yves Saint Laurent (MYSL)
Adjacent to Jardin Majorelle, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech opened in October 2017 — the same week as a sister museum in Paris. It was designed by French architecture studio KO (Karl Fournier and Olivier marty) in a building whose brick facade is laid in a pattern derived from Moroccan textiles, the brickwork itself referencing the weave of fabric. The effect, particularly in raking light, is extraordinary.
The permanent collection spans YSL's 40-year career: haute couture dresses from key collections, sketches, accessories, and a series of rooms tracing his evolution from his 1962 debut at the House of Dior through his final collection in 2002. The Marrakech museum focuses specifically on YSL's relationship with Morocco and with African and Moroccan design influence — the caftan collections, the North African palette of his later work, the way Marrakech's colours and textures moved through his design vocabulary. Temporary exhibitions rotate throughout the year.
Admission ~100 MAD; combined ticket with the garden is available. Open Tuesday–Sunday; closed Mondays. Allow 60–90 minutes for a proper visit. The museum bookshop and café are among the better ones in Marrakech.
Menara Gardens
Two kilometres southwest of Gueliz, the Menara Gardens are a vast olive grove — around 100 hectares — established by the Almohad dynasty in the 12th century to supply the royal kitchens and palaces. They remain largely intact and largely unchanged: a huge, flat expanse of ancient olive trees shading a silence rarely found this close to the city.
The centrepiece is a large rectangular reflecting pool fed by an underground channel from the Atlas Mountains, and a green-roofed pavilion (the menzeh) built in the 19th century as a royal retreat. The reflection of the pavilion in the pool, with the snow-capped Atlas behind it on clear winter and spring days, is one of the classic images of Marrakech — an image that appears on a thousand postcards and is still, in person, genuinely arresting.
The gardens are quiet on weekday mornings; busy with Marrakchi families on weekend afternoons. Entry is free; the pavilion interior costs a few dirhams to enter and is worth it for the view of the pool from the upper floor. A petit taxi from Gueliz takes about ten minutes.
The streets & what's on them
Avenue Mohammed V
The main boulevard of Gueliz — a wide, tree-lined avenue running the length of the Ville Nouvelle from the medina walls (at the Koutoubia end) to the train station. The arcaded ground floors of the buildings along it contain banks, pharmacies, cafés, and the kind of general commercial mix that Moroccan city centres tend toward. It is the navigational spine of Gueliz and the address of many of the practical facilities visitors need. Walking it from medina to station takes about 25 minutes.
Rue de la Liberté
Running parallel to Avenue Mohammed V one block north, Rue de la Liberté has the better concentration of boutique shops, galleries, and independent cafés. Several of Gueliz's best-regarded contemporary Moroccan design and clothing boutiques are on this street or its immediate surroundings.
Place du 16 Novembre
The main junction of Gueliz — a large roundabout where Avenue Mohammed V, Rue de la Liberté, and the Rue Yves Saint Laurent (the street leading to Jardin Majorelle) intersect. The square has a formal garden at its centre and is surrounded by café terraces that are the social heart of Gueliz. In the evening, it fills with a cross-section of urban Moroccan life that looks nothing like the tourist medina a kilometre away.
Marché Central
Marrakech's central market — a covered indoor market one block off Avenue Mohammed V — sells fresh produce, meat, fish, olives, preserved lemons, argan oil, spices, and household goods to the Gueliz neighbourhood. It is a working city market, not a tourist attraction, and substantially cheaper than anything in the medina souk. The fishmongers are particularly good; the olive and pickle sellers along the perimeter are worth exploring for gifts. Open daily from early morning; busiest before noon.
Eating & drinking
Gueliz is where Marrakech's contemporary dining scene lives. The medina has its great traditional restaurants and its riad kitchens; Gueliz has the modern Moroccan cuisine movement — chefs reinterpreting traditional dishes with contemporary technique and presentation — alongside international options and, crucially, licensed restaurants that serve wine and cocktails. If you want to eat and drink alcohol in Marrakech, you will eat in Gueliz or Hivernage.
Contemporary Moroccan restaurants
The bracket of mid-to-upper range contemporary Moroccan restaurants in Gueliz — concentrated on and around Rue de la Liberté, Avenue Mohammed V, and the streets north of Jardin Majorelle — represents one of the more interesting dining developments in North Africa over the past decade. Dishes draw from the Moroccan repertoire — lamb, preserved lemon, argan oil, ras el hanout, bastilla technique — but are plated and seasoned for an international audience that includes a substantial Marrakchi upper-middle class. Expect 200–400 MAD per person including wine.
Pavement cafés
Gueliz's café culture is European in form but Moroccan in content. Sitting at a pavement table on Avenue Mohammed V or around Place du 16 Novembre with a café au lait and a msemen or a pastry, watching the city pass, is one of the simple pleasures the medina cannot offer — the medina has no pavement of this width, no tables at this distance from the lane, no view of this breadth. The café terraces around the Place are the best place in Marrakech to do nothing for an hour.
Juice bars and pâtisseries
Gueliz has several excellent Moroccan pâtisseries — shops selling the full range of Moroccan pastries (fekkas, cornes de gazelle, chebakia, almond-filled pastries) alongside French-influenced cakes. These are primarily local businesses serving the neighbourhood; prices are a fraction of what the medina souvenir shops charge for the same items. Fresh juice bars — often combined with sandwiches and snacks — are concentrated along the main commercial streets.
Shopping & galleries
Gueliz's shopping is a different register from the medina souk — fixed prices, contemporary Moroccan design, and a more curated selection than the volume-driven souk stalls.
Contemporary Moroccan design boutiques
The streets around Rue de la Liberté and the blocks north of Jardin Majorelle have the best concentration of contemporary Moroccan design shops in the city — boutiques selling updated versions of traditional crafts (zellige-patterned ceramics, modernised babouches, argan beauty products in clean packaging, hand-woven textiles with contemporary colour palettes). These shops tend to be fixed-price, run by designers who trained partly internationally and returned, and aimed at a Marrakchi as well as international market. The quality is generally higher and more consistent than the souk equivalent; the prices are higher too.
Art galleries
Gueliz has a small but real contemporary art scene. Several galleries on and around Rue de la Liberté and Avenue Mohammed V show Moroccan and international contemporary artists — painting, photography, installation. Some are associated with the arts centre at Dar Cherifa in the medina; most operate independently. Opening hours are irregular; a walk along Rue de la Liberté will reveal which galleries are currently open and showing.
The YSL Museum and Majorelle boutiques
Both Jardin Majorelle and the YSL Museum have well-stocked boutiques. The Majorelle shop sells garden-branded gifts, Moroccan textiles and ceramics curated in the Majorelle Blue palette, and Berber-inspired jewellery — among the better-curated gift shops in Marrakech. The YSL museum boutique carries fashion publications, prints, and design objects associated with Saint Laurent's aesthetic and his Moroccan period.
Getting there from the medina
Gueliz begins roughly where the medina walls end, at the Koutoubia Mosque end of Avenue Mohammed V. The distance from Jemaa el-Fna to the central junction of Gueliz (Place du 16 Novembre) is approximately 2 km — a 20-minute walk along Avenue Mohammed V, which is wide, tree-lined, and pleasant. This is a walk worth doing at least once: it takes you past the Koutoubia gardens, through the transition from the ochre medina walls to the white and cream plaster of the Ville Nouvelle, and gives a sense of the city's scale.
A petit taxi from Jemaa el-Fna to Jardin Majorelle takes 10–15 minutes depending on traffic and costs 15–25 MAD metered. The taxi from the medina to the train station (also in Gueliz) takes a similar time. In both directions, insist on the meter.
The Gare de Marrakech (the train station) is at the far end of Avenue Mohammed V from the medina — a striking building in Moorish revival style built during the Protectorate, with a large modern extension added for the high-speed rail link. Trains to Casablanca depart regularly from here; the station has luggage storage, a café, and taxi ranks outside.
Practical tips
- Jardin Majorelle — book online: The garden operates timed entry and sells out on busy days (almost any day in spring and autumn). Book on the official website at least a day in advance. Showing up without a ticket almost always means queueing and sometimes means turning back.
- Combined Majorelle + YSL visit: The two sites are adjacent and take 2–3 hours combined. Buy a combined ticket at the box office or online. The YSL Museum is closed on Mondays.
- Gueliz in the heat: Unlike the medina's covered lanes, Gueliz has open streets. In July and August (40°C+), the pavement cafés with shade are the only comfortable outdoor option between noon and 4pm. Plan major walking for morning or evening.
- ATMs and cash: Gueliz has the highest concentration of bank branches and ATMs in Marrakech. If you need to draw cash for the medina, do it in Gueliz where there are more options and fewer queues.
- Pharmacies: Gueliz has multiple pharmacies on Avenue Mohammed V and its side streets. If you need medication, this is where to come — the medina has pharmacies but they are fewer and harder to find.
- Menara Gardens taxi: The Menara Gardens are not walkable from central Gueliz in the heat. Take a petit taxi (10 min, ~20 MAD) and arrange a return time or call another taxi from the garden entrance.
- Evening in Gueliz: The restaurant district around Rue de la Liberté and the streets north of Jardin Majorelle comes alive between 7pm and 10pm. Reservations are advisable at the better restaurants on weekends and throughout spring and autumn.