Feature Interview — Youssef, Resident Curator

Q1. You know Marrakech well enough to know what guests almost never find. How do you get them there, and where?

The idea is never to see more, but to experience Marrakech in a more intimate way. It all begins at the meeting point — that first walk to the Riad is not simply a transfer, it is the first contact with the curator. We walk. We talk about the Moukef, its stalls of fruit, vegetables and meat, about the rhythm of how Marrakchis shop: fresh every day, except Friday, which belongs to the Jomoa prayer, the family couscous, a different pace altogether.
As we approach Kaat Benahid, we enter the history of the neighbourhood — the fondouks where real craftsmen work, the traditional bread oven, the ochre colour of the doors. At Talaa, every morning, the artisans gather over a bowl of bissara. That is the moment something shifts in the guest: they stop seeing the city through a tourist’s eyes, and begin to see it through those of an insider.

Q2. A guest arrives with a week ahead of them and genuinely wants to understand Morocco rather than just Marrakech. What is the first thing you tell them?

Morocco is far more than Marrakech. The first thing I tell a guest who truly wants to understand this country is: leave. Not far, not for long — but leave. Essaouira embodies openness: the wind, the port, the Gnaoua and Portuguese influences tell another side of Morocco entirely. The desert explains the ochre, earth and sand colours — you suddenly understand where the walls of Marrakech come from. The Atlas explains the silence, the verticality, and the Berber origins of Moroccan people: the foundation of everything, before the dynasties, before the caravans.

Q3. What has changed about Marrakech over the years you have lived here that guests don’t yet know to ask about?

Marrakech has changed profoundly. Luxury hotels, gastronomic restaurants, art galleries, cultural events — the city now attracts a very different kind of visitor. Dior, Ferrari, Louis Vuitton have all chosen Marrakech to write part of their story. But what guests don’t yet know to ask about is what has resisted all of that. The neighbourhood hammam still running for local families. The bread oven. The fondouks where real craftsmen work, far from the tourist circuits. That Marrakech still exists — it is simply less visible, less loud.

Q4. Is there a specific place, a time of day, a quality of light — that you think is the most honest version of what this city is?

Two moments. The morning, before the city wakes up for everyone else — we walk from Kaat Benahid toward the souks, the medina still quiet, the light filtering softly onto the zelij. This is the hour when the artisans water the threshold of their shops with water and salt. Not to wash away the dust — to chase away the evil eye and begin the day with baraka. It is also the moment when the first customer of the day always pays less, by tradition: the artisan wants a good start, to put money in the till, to receive the baraka of the Ftouh. We are no longer in commerce; we are in custom.

The evening, from the terrace of the Dar Al Dall. At sunset, the light and the walls become the same colour — pink — and you can no longer quite tell where the stone ends and the sky begins. And then the Adhan begins. Not from a single mosque — from hundreds of minarets at the same time, each with the voice of its own imam, each at its own breath. It is not synchronised. It is a layering, an involuntary harmony rising from everywhere at once. That moment cannot be planned. It arrives simply because you are there, on that terrace, at the right time.