The city of Ouarzazate, which has approximately 80,000 inhabitants, is the capital of the same named province and is located between the mountain ranges of the High Atlas at an altitude of 1,160 meters.

Linking ancient Sudan with Marrakech, the town was a small but strategically important crossing point for traders from all over Africa looking to expand their markets into northern Africa and Europe. Ouarzazate expanded considerably during French colonial administration, turning into a larger garrison town and administrative centre as well as a customs and trading post. After the French protectorate left in the 1950s, the movie business took over and hasn’t looked back.

Ouarzazate is one of the most perfectly preserved examples of the Morocco we have all seen in a thousand movies. Notwithstanding the port of Pentos, one of the Free Cities in Game of Thrones, the Atlas Studios in Ouarzazate – the world’s largest film studio complex – has been used to depict places as diverse as ancient Rome, Tibet, Egypt, Somalia and dozens of Middle Eastern locations and is colloquially known as ‘Ouallywood’. The nearby Ait Ben-Haddou was used for the filming of Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, and since then, the world’s film location scouts are in Ouarzazate semi-permanently.