Marrakech Opening Hours: Fridays, Closed Days and the Holiday Calendar

Ten of the twelve doors in the table above open seven days a week or publish no weekly closing day at all. The four Ministry of Culture monuments belong to the second group, and the distinction is deliberate: their ticketing pages print hours of 09:00 to 17:00 and say nothing whatsoever about a closing day, a holiday exception or a seasonal change. This guide reports that as no weekly closing published rather than as open every day, because those are different claims and only one of them is sourced.

So the two closures that do exist catch people out

Precisely because nothing else shuts, the Wednesday and the Monday closures are the two most expensive mistakes available in this city, and both involve a crosstown journey. Neither is famous, neither is signposted from the medina, and both belong to venues people go out of their way to reach.

What is actually rigid is the 17:00 ceiling

The constraint that shapes a Marrakech day is not a closing day, it is that the four Ministry monuments all stop selling and stop admitting at 17:00 while the light lasts until well past 19:00 in summer. That leaves an eight-hour window, three hours of which are too hot to walk between courtyards from June to September, and it is why the working shape of a day here is monuments first, souks in the middle and the square at dusk. Things to do sets the same point out place by place.

The four Ministry of Culture monuments, Bahia, El Badi, the Saadian Tombs and the Almoravid Koubba, plus the Menara pavilion, admit Moroccan nationals free every Friday and on the first day of each national and religious holiday. That is published on the ticket page of each one. International visitors are not covered by it: the fare stays 100 MAD, or 50 MAD for a foreign child of 7 to 13, and the building stays open on its usual 09:00 to 17:00.

The practical effect is a crowd, not a closure

A free day for residents in a city of this size means Friday afternoons are the busiest of the week inside those four monuments, particularly at the Saadian Tombs, where the chamber that matters holds about a dozen people at a time and the queue moves in bursts. If Friday is one of your days here, take the Ministry monuments in the first hour after 09:00 and give the afternoon to something outside their gates.

The souks around midday prayers

Many shops in the souks close around Friday midday prayers, and it is worth planning around, but no authority publishes it as a rule and this guide will not print an hour for something nobody has published. What is safe to say is that the medina is quieter between roughly noon and mid-afternoon on a Friday and that couscous is the traditional Friday meal, so kitchens are busy. Treat it as a slow window rather than a closure.

Wednesday. The Musee Yves Saint Laurent is closed, and so is the Villa Oasis, the private house and garden the Fondation Jardin Majorelle opens separately. The Jardin Majorelle itself, thirty seconds along the same street, stays open every day of the year from 08:00 to 18:30. So on a Wednesday the street looks entirely normal, the garden queue is where it always is, and the museum door simply does not open. Of every closure in this city, this is the one that wastes the most journeys.

Monday, and the one museum that keeps it

Dar Si Said, the national weaving and carpet museum under the Fondation Nationale des Musees, runs Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00, and closes on Monday. It is the only Monday closure in the guide. It also opens an hour later than the Ministry monuments, which matters if you were planning to reach it at 09:00 as part of a medina circuit.

At $3.20 (30 MAD) it is the cheapest ticket in the medina, so the loss is small in money and annoying in time.

How to build a week around two closures

Put the two Gueliz-edge venues on any day except Wednesday and put Dar Si Said on any day except Monday, and nothing else in this guide constrains the order. If your trip is short enough that Wednesday is the Gueliz day, take the Jardin Majorelle alone and read the museum's collection on its page instead: the two are separately ticketed anyway, at $18.11 (170 MAD) and $14.91 (140 MAD), so nothing is wasted but the walk.

Two entities in this guide publish Ramadan hours and they are both worth knowing, because both lose their best hour of the day. Everybody else publishes nothing at all, and the Ministry platform prints the same 09:00 to 17:00 all year round.

Why no page anywhere can print the dates

The start of Ramadan in Morocco is fixed by observation of the crescent moon and announced by the Ministere des Habous et des Affaires Islamiques, normally on the evening before the month begins. The Ministry has publicly criticised media that announced a start date before its own communique. So any date printed in advance is an estimate, including the Foreign Office's own wording that Ramadan next starts in February 2027.

For a February or March trip, check the venue's own page in the week before you fly.

What else changes, in practice

Restaurant hours shift towards the evening, many kitchens in the medina serve little during daylight, and France Diplomatie states plainly that alcohol cannot be bought and certainly not consumed in public during Ramadan. The monuments themselves are not affected beyond the two venues above. Visiting during the month is not a problem, and the evening after the fast breaks is one of the better times to be on Jemaa el-Fna; it simply needs an earlier start.

The fixed list below is the government's own. For a visitor the practical effect is narrow: the monuments do not close for these days, but government offices, banks and some businesses do, and Moroccan nationals get free entry to the Ministry monuments on the first day of each one, so the crowd effect of a Friday repeats.

The four that move

The religious holidays are 1 Moharram, the Islamic New Year, one day; Aid Al Mawlid, the Prophet's birthday, two days; Aid Al Fitr, two days; and Aid Al Adha, two days. Their Gregorian dates depend on the sighting of the crescent moon and are announced by the Ministere des Habous only shortly before each occasion, against the ministry's published list of paid holidays, which is why no Moroccan government body publishes them a year ahead and why this page does not either. The one recent date the Ministry did announce is that 1 Moharram 1448 fell on Wednesday 17 June 2026.

One date on the commercial calendars that is not on the government's

31 October, sometimes printed as Fete de l'Unite or Aid Al Wahda, appears on a great many travel calendars and is not on the ministry's published list of paid public holidays. Secondary sources describe a royal decree making it an annual commemoration; the list this page is built from does not carry it. If a booking or a transfer depends on that day, treat it as a normal working day and confirm with the operator.

ANIMA garden, Andre Heller's garden 29 km south of the city on the Ourika road, closes for Aid al Fitr and Aid al Adha and states on its own visitor page that the dates are to be announced. That is the honest position for any Moroccan venue to take, and it is the only one in this guide that takes it in writing. ANIMA also runs a shuttle from the city, so a closure there is a wasted half-day rather than a wasted walk.

What the two Aids do to the rest of a trip

Aid Al Adha in particular reshapes the country for two days: intercity coaches fill, many small businesses shut, and much of the city is at home. Nothing in the monument list publishes a closure for it, but the practical texture of a day changes completely. If your dates fall near either Aid, the safe plan is one that leans on the free layer and the square rather than on a booked schedule, and what costs nothing is the page for that.

Day trips are the part that actually breaks

Road excursions to Ourika, Imlil and Essaouira run on operator schedules rather than on ministry hours, so a public holiday is a demand problem rather than a closure. Coaches and grands taxis fill early on the eve of a holiday and again on the last day of it. Booking a day trip for the first morning of an Aid is the one clearly avoidable mistake, and day trips sets out which routes have carrier timetables behind them.

The souks have no hours. Individual shops set their own and the network as a whole publishes nothing. In practice the lanes fill from about 09:00 and the covered sections stay busy into the evening, but that is a description and not a schedule, and this guide does not print it as one. If a shop matters to you, ask when you pass it the first time.

The tanneries have no hours, no entry price and no official guide fee. They are working workshops rather than a monument, and no Moroccan authority has ever set a tariff for them. Every figure quoted for a visit is a private arrangement, which is exactly the situation the Foreign Office's warning about unofficial guides describes. Morning is when the pits are worked; that is a fact about tanning, not a published opening time.

The Menara garden, the Musee de Marrakech and the hammams

The Menara pavilion has published hours of 09:00 to 17:00 and the garden around it has none at all, alongside no published fee. The Musee de Marrakech publishes neither price nor hours because its own domain does not resolve, and the site that ranks for its name identifies itself in its own footer as a travel agency. And no authority publishes a price or an opening time for a neighbourhood hammam, nor any legal distinction between a neighbourhood hammam and a spa; the hammams page sets out what can and cannot be said there.

Why the gaps are printed rather than filled

A guide that fills a silence with a plausible number is worse than one that leaves it open, because a reader cannot tell which figures were checked. Everything in the table at the top of this page carries an authority behind it. Everything in this section carries the phrase not published, and that phrase is doing real work: it means we looked, we recorded where we looked, and nobody has put a number there.

On a Wednesday, when the Musee Yves Saint Laurent is dark, the Jardin Majorelle next door is open and so is every medina venue. On a Monday, when Dar Si Said is closed, the Maison de la Photographie is open until 19:00 and stands ten minutes away with a terrace. During Ramadan, when the madrasa and the secret garden close at 16:30, the four Ministry monuments are on their usual 09:00 to 17:00 and the square is at its best after sunset in any case.

The layer that never closes

None of the free entries in this guide has a gate, an hour or a closing day: the square, the souks, the Koutoubia esplanade, the ramparts, the Kasbah, the Mellah, Gueliz and the Palmeraie. A closed museum costs you a plan, never a day. A guided medina circuit such as the palaces and souks walk, listed at $17.58, runs on the same streets whatever the museum calendar says.