Taroudant: A Gentle Guide to the Walled Town of the Souss

Most guidebooks introduce Taroudant as "Little Marrakesh," and we would like to gently retire that phrase. It sells the place short. Taroudant is not a smaller version of anywhere; it is its own town, low and level, wrapped in warm red-brown earth walls, with the snow-topped High Atlas to the north and the drier Anti-Atlas to the south.

What makes it unusual for travelers our age is simple geography. Taroudant sits on the floor of the Souss valley, and the old town inside the walls is essentially flat. There are no long climbs, no stepped alleys, no hilltop medina to conquer before breakfast. You walk out of your door, and the town is already there at eye level.

The other pleasure is the rhythm. Men carry bread on bicycles, donkey carts share the road with small cars, and horse-drawn carriages clop around the ramparts as they have for decades. Nothing here is in a hurry, which turns out to be the most comfortable travel feature of all.

A little history

Taroudant has been the market town of the Souss valley for a very long time, and for one brief, bright moment it was rather more than that. In the early 16th century the Saadian dynasty, rising out of southern Morocco, used Taroudant as its base before moving the royal seat north to Marrakesh. The town kept the benefits: sugar cane from the valley, caravans arriving from the south, and the money to build walls worthy of a capital.

Those Saadian-era ramparts are what you still see today. They are built of pisé, or rammed earth, mixed and packed into forms and left to bake hard in the sun. It is a humble material that gives the town its famous color, somewhere between apricot and dust depending on the hour, and it has to be patched and re-rendered generation after generation. In places you can see exactly where the newest repair meets the oldest wall.

The golden age faded by the 18th century as trade routes shifted and the sugar trade collapsed. What survived was the thing Taroudant had always been: an agricultural town where the countryside comes in to buy and sell. That is still, honestly, the best reason to visit.

Bab Essalssla, one of the gates in Taroudant's city wall.

What to see

Taroudant is a town for wandering rather than ticking off monuments. There is no grand museum, no queue for tickets. Allow two unhurried days and you will have seen it properly.

The ramparts and their gates

The walls form a complete circuit of roughly six to seven kilometers around the old town, punctuated by towers, bastions and a handful of monumental gateways. Bab el Kasbah, on the eastern side, is generally considered the oldest and prettiest; Bab Targhount, to the north, is the other one people photograph. You do not need to walk the whole circuit to appreciate it, and we would not suggest you try. Pick one stretch in the late afternoon, when the low sun turns the earth deep orange, and simply stand and look.

Place Assarag and Place Talmoklate

The two main squares are the town's living rooms. Place Assarag is the busier of the pair, ringed with cafés whose terraces exist chiefly so that people can watch other people. Place Talmoklate is quieter and smaller. Both are flat, both have shade, and both are excellent places to do nothing at all for an hour.

The souks

There are two, and they have different characters. The Arab souk, sometimes called the kissaria, runs roughly between the two squares and is where you will find craftwork: jewelry, metalwork, leather, carpets. The Berber souk nearby is the everyday market that keeps the town fed, piled with spices, vegetables, olives, mint and household bits and pieces. Neither is large or maze-like by Moroccan standards, and the selling is notably softer than in the big tourist cities. A polite "no, thank you" is generally accepted as an answer.

The tanneries

Just outside the walls near Bab Targhount, the tanneries work sheep, goat and camel hides much as they always have. They are more accessible and far less theatrical than the famous ones in Fez, with no rooftop terrace and no crowd. The smell is strong; if that is likely to bother you, look from the edge rather than walking in.

Derb Cherif, a street in Taroudant.

A slow circuit of the walls

If there is one thing we would tell you not to skip, it is the calèche ride. Horse-drawn carriages wait near the main squares and near the larger hotels, and the classic outing is a loop around the outside of the ramparts, taking somewhere in the region of half an hour to an hour depending on the route you agree.

It is, quietly, the perfect activity for anyone who does not want to walk seven kilometers in the sun. You sit, the wall unrolls beside you, the towers come and go, and you pass through the gaps where the town spills out into gardens and orange groves. You see more of Taroudant in forty minutes than you would in an afternoon on foot, and you see it from the exact height the town was built to be seen from.

Two practical notes. Agree the price and the length of the ride before you get in, and say clearly whether you want the full loop or a shorter version. And ask for a carriage with a step or a stool if climbing up is awkward — the drivers are used to it and will help.

A stretch of Taroudant's fortifications.

A day trip nearby: Tiout

The obvious and genuinely worthwhile excursion is Tiout, a Berber village roughly 30 to 40 kilometers southeast of Taroudant, about 45 minutes each way by car. It is a real oasis: a long palm grove fed by springs, threaded with irrigation channels and small vegetable plots, with an old kasbah standing on the rocky rise above it. The 1954 French film Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was shot here, which the village has never quite stopped mentioning.

The comfortable version of this trip is straightforward. Hire a car and driver for the half day, arrive mid-morning, and take the flat path through the palmeraie rather than climbing to the kasbah — the grove is the beautiful part, cool and green and full of birdsong, and it is level walking on packed earth. Donkeys are offered for the palm-grove route and are a perfectly dignified way to cover more ground. The climb up to the kasbah itself is short but rough and uneven, so treat it as optional.

Many visitors do Tiout as part of a longer organized day out from Agadir. If you are already staying in Taroudant, going independently and slowly is much the better experience.

The oasis at Tiout, in Taroudant province.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• The old town is flat. This is Taroudant's great gift. The medina sits on the valley floor, and the lanes between the squares and the souks are level, with no steps to speak of. Surfaces are a mix of asphalt, packed earth and worn paving — solid but occasionally uneven, so a walking stick with a rubber tip is more useful than it sounds.
• The rampart walkway involves stairs. Where you can climb onto the walls, access is by a flight of steep steps with limited handrails. The view is lovely; the climb is not for everyone, and there is no lift. The calèche loop gives you a similar reward with none of the effort.
• Watch the traffic mix, not the cars. Motorbikes, bicycles and donkey carts move quietly and quickly through the lanes. Traffic is light compared with Marrakesh, but keep to the side and expect things to come up behind you without a sound.
• Stay inside or just outside the walls. Riads and small hotels within the medina put the squares and souks within a five- to ten-minute stroll. Larger hotels sit just outside the ramparts with gardens and pools, a short taxi or carriage ride from the center. Either works; what you want to avoid is anything that requires a long walk in the afternoon heat.
• Ask about stairs before you book. Traditional riads are built around a courtyard with rooms on two or three floors and no elevator. Most will happily give you a ground-floor room if you request it when reserving.
• Respect the heat properly. In high summer, afternoon temperatures here regularly pass 39°C and can climb higher still. Even in spring, plan mornings and late afternoons outdoors and a long, still middle of the day indoors. Carry water everywhere.
• Bring cash. Taroudant is a cash town. There are banks and ATMs around the main squares, but many small shops, cafés and the souks do not take cards.
• Nights can be cold. From December to February the valley can drop to around 8–10°C after dark, and riad courtyards hold the chill. Pack a warm layer even for a "winter sun" trip.

What to eat

The Souss is argan country, and this is the single best reason to eat in Taroudant rather than on the coast. The trees grow across the valley and the hills around it, and the oil pressed from their kernels — nutty, golden, faintly toasted — turns up everywhere. Order a tagine cooked with argan oil and you will taste the difference immediately.

The local sweet thing to look for is amlou: roasted almonds ground with argan oil and honey into a thick, pourable paste, eaten with bread at breakfast. It is sometimes called Moroccan Nutella, which undersells it considerably. Many women's cooperatives in the region still make it the traditional way, and a jar travels home well.

Otherwise, expect the cooking of an agricultural valley: vegetable tagines built on whatever the market had that morning, chicken with preserved lemon and olives, lamb with prunes and almonds, lentils and white beans, harira soup in the evenings. Souss cooking tends to be lighter and more herb-forward than the north, with plenty of chermoula. Fresh oranges are everywhere — the valley is full of groves — and the juice is squeezed in front of you.

For comfort, the riads are your friends. Most will serve dinner to guests if you ask in the morning, and a quiet courtyard meal at the end of a warm day is often nicer than going out again.

Getting there

The road leading to Taroudant.

Our verdict

Taroudant is not a destination that will astonish you, and that is rather the point. There is no single sight you must see, no famous view with a crowd in front of it, no pressure to have done anything by lunchtime. What there is instead is a complete walled town on flat ground, with good food, kind shopkeepers, gardens on every side and a wall the color of warm bread.

We would recommend it particularly to two kinds of traveler. The first is anyone who has found Marrakesh too much — too loud, too pushy, too many steps — and wants the same Moroccan textures at a manageable volume. The second is anyone flying into Agadir for winter sun who would like a few days of real Morocco without a long journey. An hour inland, and you are somewhere entirely different.

Give it two or three nights, book a room on the ground floor, take the carriage round the walls at least once, and let the town set the pace. It is very good at that.

A view in Taroudant, Morocco.

“A town the color of warm bread, laid flat between two mountain ranges, in no hurry whatsoever.”

Photo credits

• Taroudant City Walls 2011: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• City Wall of Taroudant Morocco 5. September 2016 31723156244: Camping Aourir from Aourir, Marokko, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Derb Cherif, Taroudant, Morocco - panoramio: Ben Bender, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Marokko- Agadir- Taroudant - Stadtbefestigung - panoramio: Gottfried Hoffmann -…, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Oasis Tiout, Taroudant province, Morocco - منظرن في منطقة تيوت نواحي تارودانت: طالب الجنان, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Road to taroudant, Morocco.: GuHKS, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Taroudant maroc 52: Viault, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons