Rooftop bars in Marrakech, and where you can drink

The licence, not the roof, decides

Marrakech has hundreds of terraces and comparatively few alcohol licences. Licences sit mostly with hotels and with venues in the modern town. Inside the medina they are unusual.

So a medina rooftop at sunset is tea, fresh juice and a view. A Hivernage rooftop is a cocktail list. Neither is better; they are different evenings and worth planning deliberately.

The medina terrace, dry

Do not write this off. The terraces around the Jemaa el-Fna at dusk — smoke rising from the food stalls, the Koutoubia lit, swifts overhead — are among the best half hours in the city, and nothing in a glass would improve them.

Mint tea here is a real thing rather than a consolation: properly made, poured from height, sweeter than you expect unless you ask for less sugar.

The licensed rooftops

Modern town and hotels. Cocktail lists, music, later hours, and a crowd that arrives after ten. These are where an evening starts if it is going to end in a club.

Summer is their season, because the terrace is only comfortable once the sun has gone. In winter they run heaters and close earlier.

Buying alcohol to take back

If you are in a villa and want wine at the house, it is bought from a licensed shop in the modern town, usually attached to a supermarket, and the section keeps its own hours — shorter than the shop’s, and closed on some religious days.

Buy it before you need it. And ask the owner before bringing alcohol into a medina riad; some are fine with it, some are not, and it is their house.

Ramadan

For the month, most licensed venues stop serving or close. Terraces stay open for tea and come alive after sunset in a way they do not the rest of the year — a good trip, just not the one you booked if you booked it for cocktails.