Marrakech Guide

Go with the flow. Beyond the heady charms of the old city there is the ville nouvelle (new town) for dining, drinking, art galleries and fixed-price boutiques. The city invested $2bn in its tourism infrastructure in 2007, and it has ambitions plans for continuing sustainable growth - so here you still find musicians tuning up three-stringed banjos with wide welcoming grins, just as they have each evening for the past thousand years.

You can do ‘magical Marrakech’ - seven days with flights for about £600 per person - or stay a week for £377 for a couple in a handsome Moroccan hotel, with breakfast, if you book in advance. It is preferable to avoid the hottest summer months; spring and autumn have good weather for the tourist. You can stay at a guesthouse in the Kasbah for something like £50 a night, or a five-star villa-style hotel in the city for about £155 a night.

Some of the best dining is on the street from the food stalls, which appear in the evenings. There are plenty of cuisines to be found - European, middle-eastern and Moroccan among them. There are family run restaurants, leafy gardens and realistic prices.

The best way to travel in the town is by foot - if you need a car, taxi drivers are at home with driving etiquette. There are double-decker bus tours of the most famous landmarks and there is a public bus service. There is so much to see, from galleries with Islamic art, to cavernous bath houses and the ‘cyber park’ - dating from the 1700s - with wifi.

There is a vast choice of locally-crafted beautiful goods to buy, including carpets and chandeliers - but do consider how you will ship it home; smaller and easier, there is hand-made jewellery in silver, ebony, enamel, turquoise.

The currency is the Moroccan Dirham and for £10, you get about 135 of them. This is a city created for travellers to stay and recuperate, where for centuries caravans passed through; the population is tolerant, and good at providing for the visitor and making the them welcome.

For those with enough time to look beyond the city, the Atlas mountains aren’t far away, where, in the winter months, there is skiing.