What are the best hammams / spas in Morocco?

The hammam is one of Morocco's great rituals, and 'best' splits cleanly into two completely different experiences, so the honest first question is what you actually want: an authentic slice of daily Moroccan life, or a pampering treatment. They're both wonderful and I genuinely recommend doing one of each on a longer trip — but they are not the same thing and you shouldn't expect one to be the other.

The traditional public neighbourhood hammam is the real cultural experience — cheap (a few dollars), communal, gender-separated, full of local families scrubbing and chatting in clouds of steam, where you bring your own black soap and kessa glove and can pay an attendant a small fee for a vigorous scrub. In Marrakech, Hammam Mouassine and Hammam Dar el-Bacha are long-standing, atmospheric public hammams that welcome respectful visitors; nearly every Moroccan neighbourhood has one. It's not luxurious — it's authentic, a little raw, and unforgettable, and the amount of skin that scrub removes is honestly astonishing.

The luxury spa hammam is the other world: plush, private or semi-private, with everything provided, a trained therapist performing the black-soap-and-rhassoul ritual on you, often followed by an oil massage, in beautiful surroundings. At the top end, the spas at La Mamounia and Royal Mansour in Marrakech are world-class and priced accordingly; one rung down, dedicated day-spas like Les Bains de Marrakech, Heritage Spa, and La Sultana's spa, and the spas inside good riads, deliver a gorgeous hammam-and-massage for a fraction of what you'd pay in Europe. These are the easy, gentle introduction for anyone nervous about the public version.

My honest advice on choosing: if you want to touch real Moroccan culture and don't mind being scrubbed semi-nude among strangers, do a public hammam at least once — it's the authentic article and a story you'll tell forever. If you want to be pampered, relax completely, and have it all done for you in comfort, book a spa hammam, and treat it as the bargain luxury it is here. The ideal is both: the public one for the cultural plunge, the spa one for the indulgence. Either way, go in knowing the ritual — steam, black soap, the kessa scrub, rhassoul clay, rinse — so you can surrender to it rather than feeling lost.