Where do expats live in Marrakech?

Marrakech has a sizeable international community — French, British, and others who've fallen for the city and stayed — and where they settle tells you a lot about the city's neighbourhoods, so it's a useful question even for visitors weighing where to stay. Broadly, the expat map splits into three worlds: the romantics in the medina, the urbanites in the new town, and the villa-dwellers on the outskirts.

The most storied expat choice is the medina itself. For decades, foreigners have bought crumbling riads and lovingly restored them — it's almost a Marrakech cliché, the European who falls for a courtyard house and pours years into it. These owners live deep in the old city among the souks and the call to prayer, often running their riads as guesthouses or simply enjoying a beautiful private home behind an anonymous door. It's romantic and immersive, and it's why so many of the medina's loveliest riads are exquisitely done; but it means embracing the maze, the lack of parking, and life on foot.

Plenty of others prefer the new town. Gueliz and Hivernage offer modern apartments with lifts, parking, and proper kitchens, surrounded by the cafés, restaurants, galleries, and supermarkets of contemporary Marrakech. Expats who want city convenience — to drive, to shop normally, to live among Marrakech's own professional class — tend to land here. It's the practical, integrated choice, and it suits those who want Morocco without the daily logistics of medina life.

The third world is the villa belt on the city's edges and the roads leading out toward the Atlas — the Palmeraie with its palm-shaded estates, and zones like Route de l'Ourika, Targa, and Amelkis (around the golf courses) where larger plots allow private villas with gardens and pools. This is where expats go for space and serenity: a pool of your own, room for a family, mountain views, quiet. The cost is the same as it is for visitors — you're a fifteen- to twenty-five-minute drive from the medina and reliant on a car for everything. As with a visitor's stay, the real divide is the eternal Marrakech question: the romance and immersion of the old city, or the space and ease of villa life beyond it.