What's a perfect long weekend in Marrakech?

A long weekend — three nights, roughly Friday to Monday — is the perfect amount of time for Marrakech, and it's how a huge number of Europeans visit, since it's only a three-to-four-hour flight. I build it to feel indulgent rather than rushed. Arrive Friday, check into a riad inside the medina (staying within the walls is half the magic — a serene courtyard hidden behind a plain door), and do nothing ambitious on the first evening except a rooftop dinner overlooking Jemaa el-Fnaa as it comes alive with smoke, music and storytellers below. Ease in.

Saturday is your big medina day. Bahia Palace and the Saadian Tombs in the cooler morning, then deliberately getting lost in the souks — the lantern-makers, the spice mountains, the dyers' alley. Pause for a long lunch on a terrace, escape the afternoon heat with a rest at your riad, then return to Jemaa el-Fnaa after dark to eat at the food stalls and soak up the full theatrical chaos. This is the day that gives you the essential, sensory Marrakech.

Sunday I make calmer and more refined. Morning at the Majorelle Garden and the YSL Museum, that cobalt-blue oasis of quiet, then a proper hammam in the afternoon to wash off the week. In between, I'd slot one signature experience to your taste: a Moroccan cooking class, an afternoon tea and pool day at a garden hotel in the Palmeraie, or — my own favourite — a half-day drive into the High Atlas foothills to Imlil or the Ourika Valley for mountain air, waterfalls and a Berber village lunch, all within an hour of the city.

Monday you fly out, ideally with a final mint tea and a last wander for the gifts you spotted but didn't buy. Three nights is genuinely the sweet spot for Marrakech: long enough to see the city properly, have a spa day, and even touch the mountains, but short and self-contained enough to leave you exhilarated rather than worn down. It's the trip I recommend most often to first-time and returning visitors alike.