MAJORELLE

The garden gets very crowded, and you must book tickets in advance to enter. The entrance queue is outside the fence under the sun, which is something you should take into account. It is probably the best attraction in the city. Cool and refreshing even during the day, with a great variety of plants.

Great place for a relaxing hour or so. The plants create a cool micro climate in the heat of Marrakech. The bright colours of the structures in the garden contrast sharply with the green flora. The same combination of colours can be seen in the shop too. The noise from the water fountains and pools provide a soothing soundtrack. A great place for some chill time.

Firstly, the entry was truly painful. I had a ticket for 11:30 and arrived at about 11:20. There were really long queues labelled for 10:30 (that still hadn't gone in) and 11:00, but not for 11:30, so I joined the 11:00 queue knowing that it would be well after 11:30 by the time we got to the front. However, nearing the front, guards were checking ticket times in the queue and I was redirected to a new 11:30 queue that had been opened after I arrived and which was by now really long! (So if you arrive and your queue time isn't available yet - hover until it is opened and join it immediately!) Once in, the garden is beautiful but it gets CRAZY-BUSY and it did feel like you were herded through like cattle. At one point I wanted to back-track just a few metres to take some more botanical photos, and I wasn't allowed to walk back the way I had come, and instead had to walk a long way around with the crowd to get back to the same point again. There were ridiculous queues of people waiting to take selfie's at certain points and it felt like most people were ignoring the actual garden and focusing only on the buildings. It was good to see but I probably wouldn't have bothered if I'd known how crowded it would be. I understand that they have to stagger the visitor numbers, but clearly too many tickets are sold for each time slot, and I visited in December! Please note: My photos don't reflect the crowds, because I simply didn't photograph the most popular bits and I timed my shots very carefully between groups of people. It was actually rammed!