What to Wear in Marrakech

The British Foreign Office publishes this, and it is the single most quoted sentence in every Marrakech packing guide, usually without its context: "Women may receive unwanted attention in Morocco, especially when travelling alone. Consider wearing loose-fitting clothing which cover the arms, legs and chest." It appears under safety rather than under customs, and it is a recommendation about attention rather than about propriety. The same page publishes no separate guidance for men at all.

Canada is briefer: "Dress conservatively, behave discreetly and respect religious and social traditions." France recommends decent and discreet behaviour and dress respectful of local usage, and adds one specific line, that a one-piece swimsuit is preferable at the beach, which is a coastal note rather than a Marrakech one.

What that means in practice

Custom in Marrakech is set by the street rather than by a ministry, and the street is not uniform. In the medina most Moroccan women you pass are covered to the wrist and ankle and many wear a headscarf; in Gueliz at lunchtime you will see the same range of clothing as in any Mediterranean city. Visitors in shorts and vests are a normal sight in both, and nothing happens to them.

So the honest advice is comfort-led rather than fear-led. Covered shoulders and knees in loose fabric attract the least attention, are cooler than bare skin under a 36.6°C sun, and remove any question at a riad door or in a residential lane. A headscarf is not needed anywhere you are permitted to go, since the buildings that would require one are the buildings you cannot enter.

Marrakech sits on a plain at the foot of a 4,000 m range, and the consequence is a daily temperature swing that surprises people who packed for a hot country. In January the mean daily high is 18.1°C and the mean night 3.8°C; in July the high is 36.6°C and the night 19.0°C. The clothing consequence is layers in winter and long loose sleeves in summer, which is the opposite of what most visitors bring.

Summer is a clothing problem, not a modesty problem

Between June and September the medina is walked before ten and after five, and the middle of the day is spent inside a museum, a garden or a courtyard. The clothing that works in that pattern is loose, pale and long: covered arms are cooler than bare ones under direct sun, and the same garment answers the custom question without your having to think about it. Sandals fail on the second day, because the lanes are uneven and the dyers' streets are wet.

Winter catches more people out than summer does. Riads are built to shed heat, with high ceilings, tiled floors and open courtyards, and many have no heating worth the name. A January evening on a roof terrace at 5°C is genuinely cold, and the answer is the jumper you did not pack rather than the hotel's blanket.

The two things everybody underpacks

Shoes and a scarf. Closed shoes with a real sole handle the medina's cobbles, the wet patches by the tanneries and the 3 hours a day of walking a normal Marrakech itinerary involves; the shoes go on to work at Ourika and in the Atlas, where the ground is worse and the temperature lower. A large light scarf does four jobs: sun on the neck, dust in the souks, a layer at night and cover if you want it.

One more, from the practical rather than the sartorial end. Whatever you carry it in should close and sit across the body on the wall side of the lane, because the theft the advisories describe for Marrakech is a passing motorbike taking a bag or a phone, which the safety page covers in the ministries' own words.

No advisory publishes anything about what men should wear in Morocco. What exists is the same general recommendation to behave decently and discreetly and to respect local usage, addressed to visitors as a whole. In the street, Moroccan men in Marrakech wear trousers overwhelmingly; shorts read as beach clothing rather than city clothing, as they do in southern Europe, and long shorts pass without comment.

The practical case for trousers is the sun and the sitting: long light trousers are cooler on a 36.6°C afternoon than bare legs, and more comfortable on a riad terrace cushion or in a grand taxi. A collared shirt is worth one place in the bag for a Gueliz dinner and for nothing else.

Two mixed-company situations worth knowing

A neighbourhood hammam is single-sex by hours or by building and involves a level of undress that the venue's own house rules set, and no Moroccan authority publishes an etiquette code for it at all. What is officially described is only the ritual itself: steam, exfoliation with the kessa glove, black soap and ghassoul clay. Ask the hammam what to bring and what to wear, since it is the only body that can answer. The hammams page compares the public and spa versions.

The other is the swimming pool. Riad and hotel pools are private space and swimwear is normal at them; the courtyard between the pool and your room is semi-public, shared with other guests and staff, and a cover crossing it is ordinary courtesy rather than a rule.

Start with the law, because the internet gets it backwards. Penal Code article 222 punishes a person "notoriously known to belong to the Muslim religion" who conspicuously breaks the fast in a public place during Ramadan. It is drafted around that status, so it does not reach a non-Muslim foreign visitor, and no official source states that a tourist can be prosecuted under it. The advisories treat daytime eating as a matter of offence rather than of law: the British wording is that "eating or drinking, swearing, smoking or chewing gum in public in the daytime may cause offence".

Alcohol is where a real restriction bites. France Diplomatie states that during Ramadan it is not possible to buy alcohol, still less to drink it in public. Outside Ramadan the licensing instrument is an order of 17 July 1967, whose article 28 forbids a licensed seller from serving alcohol to Moroccan Muslims. There is no article 906 governing alcohol in Moroccan law, despite its appearing on numerous travel pages; it does not exist.

What a Ramadan visit is actually like

Shop and restaurant hours move, driving gets more erratic towards sunset as everyone hurries home for the iftar, and the British advice notes that clothing not meeting local dress codes may cause more offence during the month. The monuments keep their own hours, and two venues publish shortened Ramadan opening, which is the practical planning point.

The clothing consequence is small and easy: cover a little more than you otherwise would, eat and drink indoors during daylight hours rather than in the street, and do not smoke while walking through the medina. None of that is a legal requirement on you. All of it is the difference between being a guest and being a nuisance, in a month when the person serving you has not eaten since dawn.

The British advisory is unambiguous: "drinking alcohol in the street and anywhere other than a licensed restaurant or bar is illegal and can lead to arrest". That is the whole rule, and it is about place rather than quantity. A licensed restaurant, a hotel bar, a riad with a licence and your own room are inside it; a bench on a boulevard, a park, the square and a rooftop shared with the street are not.

Two further points follow from the licensing regime. The 1967 order's article 28 forbids selling alcohol to Moroccan Muslims, which is why a licensed shop may ask a Moroccan customer for identification and why alcohol is sold in a discreet corner of a supermarket rather than on an open shelf. And the British page carries a methanol warning for Morocco, that deaths and serious illness have been caused by drinks containing methanol and that it cannot be detected by taste or smell, which is an argument for licensed premises rather than for whatever is offered informally.

The advisory rule is plain: always ask permission before taking pictures of people, especially children. The legal rule points the same way from a different direction. Under Moroccan data-protection law a person's image is personal data, and processing it requires the consent of the person concerned; the authority that enforces it can impose fines of 10,000 to 200,000 dirhams.

Nobody has established that this reaches a tourist photographing a stranger in the street, and this page does not claim it does, but consent is the rule under both readings, so the practical answer is identical.

• Ask before the shutter, and expect a performer, a henna artist or an animal handler on Jemaa el-Fna to want paying. No official tariff exists for that, so agree the number first, out loud.
• Photographing near sensitive political or military sites is illegal, in the British advisory's own words, and Canada adds a flat instruction not to photograph military or security installations.
• Drones need prior permission from the Directorate General for Civil Aviation, and Canada states they will be confiscated on entry. Do not put one in the bag.
• Inside the ticketed monuments the venue's own conditions apply. None of the Marrakech monuments publishes a photography ban we could find, and none publishes a permission either.

The one that catches people out

The tanneries. There is no ticket, no published opening time and no official guide fee for them, so every arrangement at the door is private, and the sprig of mint handed to you at the top of a terrace is the opening of a negotiation rather than a courtesy. Agree what the visit costs and what a photograph costs before you climb the stairs, and read the tanneries page first, because the same absence of a tariff is why the accounts of that visit vary so wildly.

The clearest statement comes from France Diplomatie: it is formally forbidden for non-Muslims to enter Muslim places of worship, and only the great tourist sites may be visited. No Moroccan first-party source publishes the rule and the British advisory does not state it either, so the French ministry is the authority this site cites for it.

The consequences in Marrakech are specific. The Koutoubia is a working mosque, so its interior is closed to you and its gardens and esplanade are open and free. The Ben Youssef Madrasa is a former Quranic school rather than a mosque, which is exactly why it is ticketed, restored and open at $5.33 (50 MAD). The distinction is the whole answer to why one costs nothing and cannot be entered while the other charges and can.

The exception, and why it is worth the detour

The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca is the one great mosque in Morocco whose foundation admits non-Muslim visitors, on guided tours, at published times and published prices: 140 dirhams for a foreign adult, 70 for Moroccan residents and foreign students, 30 for Moroccan students and children over 4, free under 4. Visits run hourly through the morning and twice in the afternoon, with a shorter Friday list.

It is a three-hour train ride from Marrakech and outside what this guide covers, but it answers the question people arrive with. If seeing the inside of a Moroccan mosque matters to you, that is where it happens, and nowhere in Marrakech is a substitute for it.

Pack for 3 hours a day on foot on uneven ground, a 15-degree swing between afternoon and night, and lanes where you are a guest in somebody's residential street. That is the whole brief.

• Closed shoes with a real sole, worn in. The surface, not the custom, decides this one.
• Loose long trousers or a long skirt in cotton or linen, which is cooler in direct sun than bare legs and settles the custom question at the same time.
• Long light sleeves for the same two reasons, plus one short-sleeved layer for the terrace.
• A large light scarf: sun, dust, a night layer, and cover whenever you want it.
• A jumper or jacket from October to April. Riads have high ceilings, tiled floors and open courtyards, and January nights average 3.8°C.
• Swimwear for the riad pool, and something to cross the courtyard in.
• A hat and sunglasses from April to October, when the mean daily high runs from 24.7°C to 36.6°C.
• A cross-body bag that closes, worn on the wall side of the lane.
• Cash in small notes, because the medina does not take cards and nobody has change for a large one.

What to leave at home

The drone, which Canada says will be confiscated on entry. Anything you would be upset to have taken in a crowd, since visible jewellery is named in the advisories as what the motorbike thefts target. And the assumption that you need to dress differently from how you would in any hot Mediterranean city with a religious old town, because you do not.

One genuine surprise for shoppers: you will almost certainly buy clothing here. The souks sell babouches, kaftans, linen and wool at prices set by negotiation rather than by a label, which is a shopping problem rather than a packing one, and it is a good argument for leaving room in the bag.