What is Rissani / the Sunday market?

Rissani is the real, unvarnished desert town that most people pass through on the way to the Merzouga dunes without realising what they're looking at. It's built on and around the ruins of Sijilmassa — for nearly a thousand years one of the great trans-Saharan caravan cities, the gateway where gold, salt and slaves crossed between the Sahara and the imperial cities. It was also the cradle of the Alaouite dynasty that still rules Morocco today. So this dusty town carries enormous history beneath the surface.

The thing to time your visit around is the souk. Rissani's market runs three days a week — Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays — and it's one of the most genuinely local markets in southern Morocco, with almost no tourist polish. You'll find mountains of dates (this is prime date country), a clamorous livestock section where farmers trade sheep, goats and donkeys, spices, hardware, textiles, and the famous 'donkey parking lot' where people leave their animals while they shop. It's loud, dusty, real, and a photographer's dream — just ask before photographing people.

Don't leave without trying medfouna, often nicknamed 'Berber pizza' or 'Berber calzone' — a round flatbread stuffed with spiced minced meat, onions, almonds and herbs, baked in the ashes. Rissani is the home of it, and eating a fresh one in the market is one of those small, perfect travel moments. The town also has a couple of monuments worth a quick look: the ornate Ksar Abbar and the mausoleum of Moulay Ali Cherif, founder of the Alaouite line.

My advice: build Rissani into your Merzouga trip, ideally on a market day. It's only around 40 minutes from the dunes, so a morning at the souk before heading to the desert camp works beautifully and adds real cultural depth to what can otherwise be a 'dunes-only' visit. If your dates don't hit a market day, the town is quieter and you'll mostly just pass through — so it's worth checking the Sun/Tue/Thu calendar when you plan.