Ouarzazate

Where it sits. Ouarzazate lies at about 1,160 metres on a bare plateau south of the High Atlas, at the point where the drainage of the Dades and the Ouarzazate rivers gathers before running south into the Draa. The mountains wall the northern horizon; in every other direction the country is open hamada, gravel and low ridges, with the reservoir of the El Mansour Eddahbi dam spreading east of town. The name is usually glossed as a Berber phrase meaning something close to "without noise", and the setting delivers on that: a low, wide, dry town of ochre-rendered buildings on a grid, with a single long main avenue and enormous skies.

How the town came to exist. Ouarzazate is modern. It grew from a French garrison established in the late 1920s at a strategic junction of caravan routes from the Draa, the Dades and the Tafilalt toward Marrakesh, and it has been an administrative and military centre ever since. The older layer is the Kasbah Taourirt on the eastern edge, a rambling earth-built complex associated with the Glaoui family, who dominated southern Morocco in the first half of the twentieth century. Its warren of rooms, painted ceilings and stepped alleys has been partly restored, with sections consolidated in an international conservation programme, while other wings remain closed and slumping.

The film industry. Since the early 1980s the town's principal claim has been cinema. Atlas Corporation Studios opened northwest of the centre in 1983, CLA Studios followed in the 2000s, and between them they have supported a steady flow of foreign productions drawn by cheap, skilled crews, guaranteed sunlight, an airport, and a landscape that can be dressed as Egypt, Judaea, Rome's African provinces, Tibet, Somalia or another planet. The list of films worked on here runs from Lawrence of Arabia and The Man Who Would Be King through Kundun, The Mummy, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and Babel to recent streaming series. Locals refer to the town, half-ironically, as Ouallywood. The Cinema Museum opposite Kasbah Taourirt keeps a rough, unglamorous collection of leftover sets, props, lighting rigs and costumes in a former studio building, and it is more revealing about how the industry actually works than the tidier attractions.

On screen, on the ground. Two things are worth knowing before hunting locations. First, the most famous "Ouarzazate" scenes were usually shot outside the town: Aït Benhaddou, 30 kilometres northwest, supplied Gladiator's Zucchabar and Game of Thrones' Yunkai, and the arena for the Gladiator sequences was a temporary build on open ground. Second, sets here are made to be photographed rather than to last. Plaster, polystyrene and painted timber weather quickly in this climate, and productions routinely demolish old sets to clear space. What survives on the studio backlots is a landscape of half-collapsed facades rather than preserved film heritage.

Solar power on the hamada. The other thing Ouarzazate is now known for stands about 30 kilometres northeast near Ghassate. The Noor complex, built in stages from the mid-2010s, is one of the largest concentrated solar power installations in the world, combining vast fields of curved parabolic mirrors with a central-tower plant whose receiver sits on a structure well over 200 metres high and is visible from a long way across the plain. The plant is not generally open to casual visitors, but the scale is unmistakable from the N10 road east.

Using the town as a base. Ouarzazate is the hinge of southern Morocco's road network. North the N9 climbs the Tizi n'Tichka to Marrakesh, roughly 200 kilometres and four hours on a much-improved but still serpentine road. East the N10 runs through Skoura's palm grove and the kasbah country of the Dades to Boumalne and the gorges. South the N9 continues down the Draa valley to Agdz and Zagora. Hotels range from crew-favoured business places on the main avenue to restored kasbah guesthouses in the surrounding villages. The reservoir east of town, held back by the El Mansour Eddahbi dam, supports birdlife that is unexpected in this landscape, with waders and wintering ducks on the shallows, and it supplies irrigation far down the Draa.

Getting there and timing. Ouarzazate Airport takes flights from Casablanca and a handful of European cities; buses and grands taxis connect to Marrakesh, Zagora, Erfoud and the Dades. March to May and September to November are the comfortable windows. Winter days are clear and bright with nights near freezing at this altitude, and July and August regularly exceed 40 °C, when the film industry itself largely stops shooting outdoors in the middle of the day.