Movies Filmed in Morocco: the Film Sets You Can Visit

Morocco has been a film set since the late 1940s, and its capital of cinema is Ouarzazate, with its studios and, about 30 km away, the ksar of Ait Ben Haddou, which has played a Roman provincial town in Gladiator, the slave city of Yunkai in Game of Thrones and Troy in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026). The big sets are built for each film and taken down afterwards, so what you can actually visit is the ksar itself, the standing sets of Atlas Studios and a handful of locations in Essaouira, Marrakech and Tangier.

The short answer

Ait Ben Haddou, a fortified earthen village listed by UNESCO, is one of the most filmed places in Morocco. You walk through it freely; the film sets are gone.
Atlas Studios, founded in 1983 about 5 km west of Ouarzazate on the road to Marrakech, shows its standing sets on guided tours every day.
Elsewhere: Essaouira, Marrakech, Tangier, Rabat, Casablanca and the desert near Erfoud all have famous credits, from Orson Welles to James Bond.
Not Casablanca: the 1942 classic never came to Morocco. It was shot in California.

Why Ouarzazate became "Ouallywood"

Ouarzazate lies south of the High Atlas, where the light is hard and clear most of the year and the landscape easily passes for somewhere else: the Holy Land, Egypt, Arabia, even Tibet, which Martin Scorsese recreated here for Kundun (1997). Earthen villages and kasbahs need little dressing to look ancient, and decades of shoots have trained local crews, set builders and extras who know the work. The nicknames followed: "Ouallywood", or "the Hollywood of Africa".

Atlas Studios, the first big studio, was founded in 1983 by the Moroccan entrepreneur Mohamed Belghmi; others, such as CLA Studios, followed. Since 2022 Morocco has refunded 30 % of eligible spending to foreign productions, and in 2025 a Moroccan producer told the trade magazine Screen Daily that five or six big films now shoot in the country at the same time. So the studios are working lots, not theme parks, and a village you visit may have a crew in it.

Ait Ben Haddou on screen

Ait Ben Haddou has appeared in dozens of productions, and online lists often mix it up with the studios or with other villages. The table keeps only credits confirmed by at least two independent sources.

Title	Year	What the ksar played
The Man Who Would Be King	1975	the caravan procession and the capital of "Kafiristan"
The Jewel of the Nile	1985	part of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner's North African adventure
Gladiator	2000	the North African town where Maximus is sold as a slave and first fights in the arena
Kingdom of Heaven	2005	scenes of the Holy Land (the big Jerusalem set stood near Atlas Studios)
Game of Thrones, season 3	2013	Yunkai, the Yellow City
The Odyssey	2026	Troy at the end of the war

Several sources also place Sodom and Gomorrah (1962), The Mummy (1999) and Prince of Persia (2010) here without saying what the ksar played. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is on every list, but its desert scenes were shot mainly in Jordan and Spain; one massacre scene was filmed around Ouarzazate, and whether the ksar itself appears is poorly documented.

All these sets were temporary. The Gladiator arena and Troy's temple and gates were removed after filming, so what you see today is the real village. For the history behind it, read our short history of Morocco.

Visiting Ait Ben Haddou

The ksar grew up on the caravan route between the Sahara and Marrakech. The site has been fortified since the 11th century, though most of the buildings standing today date from the 17th century or later. UNESCO listed it in 1987, and it features in our guide to Morocco's UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Most families have moved to the modern village across the river; only a few still live inside. If the difference between a ksar and a kasbah puzzles you, see kasbah, ksar, riad or dar.

Getting in: cross the riverbed on the footbridge built in 2011. There is no ticket office for the village, but some houses ask a small fee or a tip to show you inside.
The climb: lanes and steps lead up to the ruined granary (agadir) on top of the hill, with the view over the river and the valley.
Time: allow an hour and a half to two hours, in proper shoes. Early morning and late afternoon give the warmest light and fewer groups.

Our day trip to Ait Ben Haddou leaves Marrakech at 7:30, crosses the Tizi n'Tichka pass (2,260 m) and takes about 4 hours each way with photo stops; in the ksar, a local guide walks you through the lanes and tells the story of its many film shoots. It is also the first stop of our 2-day Zagora desert tour.

Visiting Atlas Studios: what you see

Atlas Studios stands about 5 km west of Ouarzazate on the N9 to Marrakech, and you can only visit it with a studio guide. Groups leave once enough visitors have gathered, so you may wait a little, and the tour lasts 45 minutes to an hour. What still stands in 2026, according to recent visitors:

an Egyptian temple with giant statues, seen in Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra and other Egyptian epics;
the Tibetan monastery built for Scorsese's Kundun;
props from Gladiator, such as chariots and cages, and a replica fighter jet from The Jewel of the Nile;
desert streets and walls reused from one film to the next.

Further out in the desert stands the fortress built as Jerusalem for Kingdom of Heaven, used again in Game of Thrones and as the city of Numidia in Gladiator II. Atlas sells it as an add-on, but it closes whenever a crew is working there: one visitor found it shut for a shoot in October 2026. Parts of the main lot close for the same reason, so it makes sense to check the day before.

Hours and prices: open every day from about 8:30 until late afternoon (closing time varies with the season). For years the tour cost about 80 MAD (around €7), or 110 MAD (€10) with the Kingdom of Heaven set; visitors since August 2026 report paying 130 MAD (about €12), which one says includes that set. Children under 5 go free. Bring cash and check the price at the gate.

CLA Studios, described by Moroccan press as the largest in town, is harder to pin down: some guides list tours, one traveller found it marked as closed. Ask us before counting on it. The town's Cinema Museum, opposite the Taourirt Kasbah, was badly damaged by a fire on 21 June 2024, and we have found no confirmation that it has reopened. On the 2-day tour, the second day stops in Ouarzazate for lunch and the Taourirt Kasbah; a studio visit isn't part of the programme, but ask us if you'd like to add one.

Game of Thrones in Morocco

Morocco joined the series in season 3 (2013), for Daenerys Targaryen's storyline:

Astapor, the slave city where she buys the army of the Unsullied, is Essaouira: the Skala de la Ville, the sea ramparts lined with old cannons, and the bastion at its northern end.
Yunkai, the Yellow City, is Ait Ben Haddou.
The old Kingdom of Heaven fortress near Atlas Studios was also used in the series.

Don't expect a themed trail: you simply walk the same ramparts and lanes. In Essaouira the Skala is a short walk from the port; see things to do in Essaouira, or come on our day trip to Essaouira.

Gladiator and Gladiator II

Gladiator (2000) used Ait Ben Haddou as the town in Rome's North African province where Maximus is sold to the gladiator trainer Proximo. The provincial arena where he wins his first fights was built for the film against the edge of the village; it was a temporary set and no longer stands. Ridley Scott came back to the area for Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and again for the sequel.

Gladiator II (2024) began filming near Ouarzazate in June 2023. Its opening, the Roman attack on the North African city of Numidia, was shot on the fortress first built for Kingdom of Heaven. The sea in that scene is digital: the full-size Roman ships were moved around the desert on hydraulic transporters of the kind used for oil rigs. Rome itself was filmed mainly in Malta.

What's left to see: nothing of the first film's arena, but the walls of Numidia are the Kingdom of Heaven set that Atlas Studios shows when no one is filming there.

The Odyssey (2026)

Christopher Nolan started shooting The Odyssey at Ait Ben Haddou in late February 2025. To turn the ksar into Troy, the crew added about 60 temporary structures, including the city gates and a pillared temple of Athena, over roughly a hectare, with about 2,000 extras. Two other Moroccan locations appear on screen:

Essaouira's beach, where the Trojans find the wooden horse half-buried in the sand, left as an offering to Poseidon;
Tahanaout, a market town about 30 km south of Marrakech, used for parts of the city.

The film was released on 17 July 2026. The Troy set was dismantled after filming: the ksar you visit is the one on screen, without the temple and gates.

Elsewhere in Morocco

Casablanca (1942): shot almost entirely on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California. Rick's Café in Casablanca is a recreation, opened in 2004 by Kathy Kriger, a former American diplomat, in a 1930s house against the old medina walls. More in is Casablanca worth visiting?
Othello (Orson Welles, 1951): filmed largely in Essaouira, then called Mogador, whose fortress played the Cyprus garrison, with scenes in El Jadida and Safi. Entered as a Moroccan production, it shared the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1952.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956): the souks and Jemaa el-Fna in Marrakech, with James Stewart and Doris Day staying at La Mamounia.
The Mummy (1999): Marrakech played 1920s Cairo, and the lost city of Hamunaptra was built in the desert near Erfoud.
Spectre (2015): Tangier, a desert railway in the east of the country and Gara Medouar, a ring of rock near Erfoud, as the villain's base. The explosion filmed there holds the Guinness World Record for the largest film stunt explosion.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and Inception (2010): foot chases through the medina of Tangier, which stands in for Mombasa in Inception.
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015): a car and motorbike chase on the Marrakech motorway, closed for 14 days for the shoot, and in Rabat, below the Kasbah of the Udayas, and the streets of Casablanca.

Planning a film-locations trip from Marrakech

Ait Ben Haddou is about 170 km from Marrakech over the Tizi n'Tichka, and Atlas Studios about 25 km further, just before Ouarzazate.

One day: the day trip covers the ksar. Adding the studios is possible but makes a very long day.
Two days: the 2-day Zagora tour visits the ksar on the first day and Ouarzazate on the second.
More time: our 5-day Marrakech to Merzouga tour sleeps in Ouarzazate on the fourth night and returns to Ait Ben Haddou the next morning: the easiest way to fit in the studios. Our guide to the Marrakech to Merzouga route explains every stop, and the Ouarzazate and Ait Ben Haddou page gathers the tours that pass through.
Essaouira makes a separate day from Marrakech, for the ramparts of Astapor and Othello and the beach of The Odyssey.