The road south from Marrakech climbs to 2,260 metres before it descends, and for most of the twentieth century it was passable only in daylight. The Tizi n'Tichka pass, cut by the French colonial administration in the 1930s along an older caravan track, remains the single artery linking the imperial city to the pre-Sahara. Every marrakech to ouarzazate tour follows it. Ouarzazate itself is younger than the route. The French established a garrison here in 1928, on a plateau above the confluence of the Draa and Dades drainages, choosing the site for its sightlines rather than its water. Before that, the ground belonged to the Glaoui dynasty, whose kasbah at Taourirt — a warren of some 300 rooms in rammed earth — administered the southern passes on behalf of the Sultan. The Glaoui fell in 1956. Their architecture did not. What draws visitors now is a second, stranger inheritance. In 1983 David Lean filmed part of the desert sequences nearby, and in 1983 the town's first permanent studio infrastructure followed; Atlas Corporation Studios opened in 1983 on the Route de Marrakech and has since hosted productions from Lawrence of Arabia's successors to Gladiator and Game of Thrones. Sets are left standing. A Tibetan monastery, a Roman amphitheatre, and an Egyptian temple sit within walking distance of one another, sun-bleached, built from plaster over timber frame. Standard entry is 80 MAD per person. Ouarzazate day trip tours almost always pair this with Ait Ben Haddou, twenty miles west, where the real thing stands: a fortified ksar of stacked pisé towers, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1987 and continuously inhabited, in some form, since the eleventh century. The contrast is the point. One settlement was built to be defended; the other to be photographed. Both use the same material — earth, straw, lime — and both are dissolving at roughly the same rate under winter rain. Restoration at Ait Ben Haddou is ongoing and deliberately traditional, using no cement. Ouarzazate landmarks also include the Noor solar complex on the eastern plain, one of the largest concentrated-solar installations built anywhere, which since 2016 has made the province an exporter of energy rather than only of labour. A marrakech to ouarzazate tour tour therefore crosses three distinct centuries in under five hours of driving, and marrakech to ouarzazate tour tickets sold as multi-day itineraries push further still, toward Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi dunes.