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Telouet: Guide to Telouet and Kasbah Telouet
The peaceful Berber village of Telouet has one of the most spectacular sights of the Atlas – the Glaoui Kasbah. Although fast decaying into the dark red earth and of little aesthetic value, this vast and weird site offers a unique glimpse into the quasi-medieval power in 20th century Morocco. It is a tale of chance and cunning, style and melodrama of two brothers from the Glaoui clan.
The Dar Glaoui
The Kasbah Glaoui was built by Thami el Glaoui, the second great Glaoui chieftain but was abandoned before completion. Of the Kasbah today little remains, but the structure is huge and there is enough to fill a day of impressions. It is said that there are so many connecting passages and locked doors that nobody knew their way around the complex! Sadly, with the harem, the kitchens and the cinema fast crumbling, visitors are only shown the main halls and the reception rooms.
You enter through a wooden wicket gate, past the state apartments and into the great reception rooms. They are still splendid with their fine carved ceilings and crumbling stucco, a perfect transposition of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Moroccan urban taste in the mountains. There is also a tremendous scale of luxury, demonstrated by the use of green tiles for the roof – a privilege usually reserved for mosques and royal palaces.
Your visit concludes with a clamber up to the roof. From here, you can look down on the courts and chambers, the bright stucco and zellij, and leave with an enduring impression of the Kasbah Glaoui.
Getting to Kasbah Glaoui
If you have your own transport, getting to Telouet is straightforward. Follow the Marrakech – Ouarzazate Road (N9) and then turn off at the pass along the paved 6082. Telouet is only a few kilometres away.
If you’re using public transport, there is a daily bus departing from Bab Rhemat in Marrakech to Telouet and on to Anemiter, 11 kilometres from Telouet. There are also grand taxis from Marrakech making the journey to Anemiter, via Telouet.