Marrakech on a budget

Best hostels

Marrakech splits into two accommodation worlds separated by a short taxi ride and several centuries of city planning. The medina — the old walled city around Jemaa el-Fnaa — is where riads hide behind heavy wooden doors on streets too narrow for cars, and where the call to prayer from Ben Youssef Mosque sets the rhythm of the morning. West of the ramparts, Gueliz is the French-colonial new town: wide boulevards, café terraces along Avenue Mohammed V, and apartment blocks with working elevators and reliable hot water. Budget travelers will find the medina's riad conversions clustered near the shrines of Sidi Bel Abbasi and Imam Jazuli, while Gueliz scatters its options along the grid between Place du 16 Novembre and the railway station. The choice is not better or worse — it is whether you want to wake to rooftop light over terracotta or to traffic on a paved boulevard. Both neighborhoods keep you well under a hundred dollars a night for a clean bed, and regular buses connect the two along Avenue Mohammed V.