Is a morning or evening hammam better?

I genuinely love this question because the answer reveals how you like to travel. A hammam — steam room, black-soap soak, the vigorous gommage scrub that takes off a layer of you, buckets of warm water — resets the body completely, and the timing changes what that reset does. There's no wrong choice here, only a choice that fits your rhythm. Let me give you the honest case for each, because I book both for different clients and even for myself on different days.

A morning hammam is the energiser. You go in slightly creaky, you come out scrubbed pink, loose-limbed, and weirdly clear-headed, ready to take on a hot day in the souks feeling brand new. Public neighbourhood hammams are also quieter and more local in the morning, before the after-work rush, so if you want the genuine community version rather than the spa version, mornings are calmer and easier to navigate as a visitor. The downside is that you then go straight back out into the dust and heat you just washed off.

An evening hammam is the unwinder, and it's the more traditional rhythm for Moroccans, who often go to cleanse and relax at the end of the day. After a long, hot, dusty day of walking medinas, sinking into the steam, getting scrubbed, and emerging soft and drowsy is sublime — it's the best possible prelude to a good dinner and the deepest sleep of your trip. In a luxury riad spa, an evening hammam-and-massage wrapped in candlelight is pure decompression. The only catch is that spa hammams get busier in the evening, so book ahead.

So here's how I actually decide it for people. If your day is front-loaded with activity and you want to launch into it feeling reborn, go morning — and seek out a local public hammam for the authentic, sociable version. If your day is packed with hot sightseeing and you want a soft landing into the evening, go evening — ideally a riad spa where you can drift in the courtyard afterward. And if you're on a longer trip, do one of each; they're different pleasures, and a hammam is too good an experience to ration to once.