What's there to do in Ouarzazate besides the studios?

Ouarzazate is famous as Morocco's "Hollywood" thanks to the Atlas and CLA film studios, but I'd gently argue the studios are the least interesting reason to be here. The town's real value is as a gateway to some of the most cinematic landscapes in the country — kasbahs, oases and gorges that look like film sets precisely because so many films are shot among them. So if you skip the studio tours entirely, you'll still have a wonderful one or two days. Here's where I'd send you instead.

Start in town with the Taourirt Kasbah, a sprawling earthen fortress of the powerful Glaoui family right on Ouarzazate's main street — a labyrinth of mud-brick towers, courtyards and decorated rooms that's far more atmospheric than any studio backlot, and a real piece of southern Moroccan history. Then make the short trip (around 30 kilometres) to Aït Benhaddou, the UNESCO-listed ksar that is genuinely unmissable: a tawny hillside of stacked kasbahs above a river, instantly familiar from countless films, and best climbed in the soft light of early morning or late afternoon for the views over the valley.

East of Ouarzazate the country opens into the "Route of a Thousand Kasbahs," and this is where I'd spend a full day. The Skoura oasis is a dense palmeraie hiding the beautifully restored Kasbah Amridil — one of the most picturesque earthen fortresses in Morocco and a calmer, less crowded alternative to Aït Benhaddou. Push on and the road leads to the Dades Gorge, with its rippling "monkey-finger" rock formations and famous switchback bends, and the towering Todra Gorge, where sheer canyon walls soar hundreds of metres above a narrow river path. It's a spectacular drive through Berber villages and ribbon oases.

South of town, the Draa Valley unfurls toward Zagora and the Sahara — an endless ribbon of palm groves, mud-brick villages and old kasbahs following the river, and the classic overland route to the desert dunes. Even a short drive into it gives you the sense of Morocco tipping over into the desert. And for a lovely off-the-radar half-day, the Fint Oasis sits hidden in the rocky hills just outside Ouarzazate: a surprising green slash of palms and a stream where Berber villages farm, reachable by a rough track, peaceful and almost untouristed — a wonderful contrast to the arid plateau around it.

My honest take: use Ouarzazate as a base, not a destination, and the studios as an optional footnote. Give the town its Taourirt Kasbah, then spend your time among the real kasbahs and oases that fill the region — Aït Benhaddou, Skoura, the Dades and Todra gorges, the Draa Valley and the Fint Oasis. That's the genuinely memorable Ouarzazate, and it's exactly the loop our two-day Ouarzazate itinerary follows.