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Textile and Carpet Gallery

Textile and Carpet Gallery
Photo by Rebaz Geo on Pexels
Textile and Carpet Gallery
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Textile and Carpet Gallery
Photo by Tuba Karabulut on Pexels
Textile and Carpet Gallery
Photo by Yunus Tuğ on Pexels
Textile and Carpet Gallery
Photo by Hafsa Melike Selen on Pexels
Textile and Carpet Gallery
Photo by Deklanşör on Pexels

Inside the Marrakech Museum's textile and carpet gallery, the rooms are organized by region rather than by century — so you move from High Atlas geometrics to the finer, more formal knotwork of Rabat, each tradition distinct enough that the shift between doorways registers immediately. The oldest pieces in the collection date to the 1850s, pulled from a private archive built over five decades.

What holds your attention isn't always the showpiece carpets. It's the saddlebags, the cushions, the ancestral weaving tools arranged alongside them — the full picture of how these textiles actually lived before they became collectible.

💛 What travellers fall for

People who come back tend to linger in the Projection Room, where a rare 1940s French documentary on Berber weaving runs on loop. It's easy to miss if you follow the main flow of foot traffic. Go against the crowd, start there, and the objects in the other rooms land differently afterward.

Good to know
The gallery sits inside the Marrakech Museum at Place Ben Youssef — closed Tuesdays, open 9am to 6pm the rest of the week. Entry is 50 MAD for adults. The museum is compact enough to cover in under two hours; pair this room with the Central Courtyard before the midday crowds arrive.
The story

How Textile and Carpet Gallery came to be

The building that houses these collections, Dar Menebhi Palace, has its own layered past — but the textile holdings draw on a private collection assembled over more than fifty years, with pieces reaching back to the 1850s. The decision to organize the gallery by region rather than chronology reflects how carpet-making in Morocco has always been a matter of place: the High Atlas, the Middle Atlas, the Haouz plain each produced something recognizably its own.

The Marrakech Museum itself opens daily except Tuesdays, and the textile rooms sit within the broader palace circuit rather than as a standalone institution — which means the collection benefits from the architecture around it.

People & landmarks

Who and what shaped it

People who shaped it

Si Sa'id ibn Musa
Vizier and minister of defence who built Dar Si Said palace (1894–1900), now the National Museum of Weaving and Carpets.
Nasser Ksikes
Fourth-generation carpet merchant and collector; founded Maison Culturelle du Tapis in the Laksour district.

Landmark buildings

Dar Si Said Palace
Built 1894–1900; reopened 2018 as National Museum of Weaving and Carpets; damaged in September 2023 earthquake and closed for repairs.
Dar Mnebhi Palace
Houses the Marrakech Museum; textile and carpet gallery organized by region (High Atlas, Middle Atlas, Rabat, Haouz); open daily except Tuesdays.
Maison Culturelle du Tapis
Restored 17th-century riad in Laksour district; offers 45-minute exhibitions and 2-hour weaving workshops.
Practical

Plan your visit

On the map

When to go

Right now

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Sat
40°
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Sun
38°
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Mon
38°
22°
Tue
41°
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Weather data: Open-Meteo

Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.

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