Marrakech
Marrakech is a thousand-year experiment in passive cooling. The Medina’s alleys — some no wider than a man’s shoulders — were drawn to stay shaded from morning prayer to dusk; the riads turn their backs to the street and pull cool air down through a courtyard fountain; the souks wear roofs of woven palm-frond rkayna that filter the sun into stripes. Our model reads the building geometry off OSM heights and routes the lanes the sun never quite finds. The dry heat is the catch — 99°F at 7% humidity is survivable in shade and brutal out of it. The shade is the whole game.
Stay Cool routes around shade in Marrakech, MA. The app picks the cooler side of every street using real building heights and live sun position — peak summer UV here is 11, average July high is 99°F, and tree canopy covers 5% of the city. Below: the most reliably-shaded walking routes we've found, plus deeper neighborhood field notes when available.
Highlights · 3
- 01Jemaa el-Fnaa to the Koutoubia
The square is the one place in the Medina with no answer for the sun — 100,000 square feet of open stone. We route the western arcade to the minaret’s shadow and do not linger.
Shade38%Walk6 minBest at4:30 pm - 02Souk Semmarine to Ben Youssef
The covered souks do almost all the work — palm-frond roofs and three-foot lanes throw deep shadow even at solar noon. The model reads conservative here; the real cover is better than the geometry shows.
Shade86%Walk8 minBest at1:30 pm - 03Jardin Majorelle to the YSL Museum
Gueliz is the French-built quarter — wide boulevards, modern setbacks, and the sun has its way. The two cool blocks belong to the garden wall and the museum’s overhang. We route them and nothing else.
Shade52%Walk3 minBest at11 am