The World's Largest Film Studio Is a Mud Hangar Beside the Sahara

Fifteen minutes outside Ouarzazate, on the road to Marrakech, a walled compound of mudbrick facades sits in flat, stony desert looking exactly like a cluster of film sets — because that’s exactly what it is. Atlas Studios has been cited for decades as the world’s largest film studio by land area, though the number depends on who’s counting: anywhere from roughly three hectares for the built compound to eleven hectares for the wider grounds, according to different sources. What isn’t in dispute is the filmography built on that ground: an arena raised for Gladiator, a temple for The Mummy, and streets that stood in for Astapor and Pentos in Game of Thrones, all still standing, in varying states of upkeep, in the same patch of desert.

Thirty kilometres away, the kasbah of Ait Benhaddou does similar work with far less artifice: a UNESCO World Heritage ksar of pise towers above a river bend, where a handful of families still live, and where more than eighty productions — from Lawrence of Arabia to Game of Thrones — have used the real walls instead of building new ones. Together, the studio and the kasbah explain Ouarzazate’s nickname, “Ouallywood.” This guide covers what’s actually still visible at Atlas Studios, how neighboring CLA Studios fits in, what a respectful visit to Ait Benhaddou looks like after the 2023 earthquake, and how to link both into a trip from Marrakech or a base in Ouarzazate itself.

Atlas Studios and CLA Studios: Two Compounds, One Owner

Atlas Studios is not a rebrand of anything, and it hasn’t merged with a neighbor. It’s simply the older of two adjacent, separately built complexes on the N9 about five kilometres west of central Ouarzazate. The entrepreneur Mohamed Belghmi built it in 1983; the Moroccan conglomerate Sanam Holding bought it in 1988 and, in January 2005, opened a second, smaller compound next door under the name CLA Studios, home to the three-plateau Kingdom of Heaven Jerusalem set. Sanam Holding now describes itself as owner of both of “the two largest film studios in the world,” which is a large part of why so many travel write-ups blur Atlas and CLA into a single place: they’re run by the same group, sold on the same ticket, and visited on the same circuit, so films get credited — sometimes wrongly — to whichever of the two a given source assumed.

However large the compound really is, in practice the guided tour defines the visit, not the paperwork over acreage. Entry is inexpensive and informal: no booking is typically needed, tours leave every 20 to 40 minutes, and reviews are genuinely mixed — most visitors describe it as a worthwhile stop for film fans rather than an unmissable headline attraction, with a few interior exhibition rooms noticeably rougher than the outdoor sets.

What’s Still Standing: Gladiator, The Mummy, and Westeros in the Sand

What’s actually left to see depends on which sets have survived weather, reuse, and time. The gladiator school and slave-market facades built for Gladiator (2000) — including the arena where Russell Crowe’s Maximus trained, in heat that reportedly hit 45C during the shoot — remain part of the standard tour. So does the Egyptian temple raised for Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002), remnants of Kundun’s (1997) Tibetan monastery set, and the walled, roughly 28,000-square-metre Jerusalem reconstruction built for Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005) — later repainted and reworked to stand in for ancient “Numidia” in Gladiator II (2024). The Mummy (1999) used Atlas Studios as its production base, even though Hamunaptra’s temple itself was built near Erfoud, roughly 300 kilometres away.

Game of Thrones shot its Astapor and Pentos interiors here across Seasons 3 and 4 (2013–2014), while Ait Benhaddou, thirty kilometres down the road, stood in for Yunkai during Daenerys’s liberation of the Unsullied. Attributing every set to Atlas specifically, rather than to its smaller neighbor CLA Studios, is where a lot of travel guides get sloppy: the two compounds sit on the same road and are toured on the same ticket, and productions have used both over four decades of filmmaking here. Treat any claim that pins a specific set to one address over the other with a little skepticism unless it comes with a named source.

Ait Benhaddou: The Kasbah That Refused to Become a Museum

Ait Benhaddou looks, from a distance, exactly like a film set: red-ochre pise towers stacked above a river bend, walls turned gold at sunset. It isn’t one. Most of the roughly ninety families the village once housed relocated across the Ounila river to a “new village” decades ago, as the site’s role as a trans-Saharan caravan relay faded, but four to six families still live inside the historic walls today, re-plastering facades and maintaining irrigation channels every season. UNESCO listed the ksar as a World Heritage Site in 1987, and that status, combined with film and tourism revenue, is a large part of what has kept the settlement from following the caravan trade into total abandonment.

The September 2023 Al Haouz earthquake, centred roughly 72 kilometres southwest of Marrakech, cracked and partially collapsed several of the upper towers here, alongside far heavier damage closer to the epicentre. Restoration is ongoing under CERKAS, the Moroccan body responsible for conserving the region’s earthen architecture, working with UNESCO and UNDP support under a management plan running through 2030 — expect some scaffolding and access limits in the upper sections. Entry to the ksar itself is officially free; the trick is using the official entrance past the bridge rather than a secondary access point, where some visitors report being asked for an unofficial fee. A handful of house-museums inside, including the so-called House of Cinema, charge a modest 10 to 50 MAD. Budget two to three unhurried hours, and aim for early morning or late afternoon, when the light on the pise genuinely does look the way it does on screen.

Getting There: Marrakech, the Tizi n’Tichka Pass, or Basing Yourself in Ouarzazate

The road from Marrakech covers about 200 kilometres via the N9 and the Tizi n’Tichka pass — at 2,260 metres, the highest paved road crossing in North Africa, and a slow, switchback-heavy drive best enjoyed rather than rushed. Depending on traffic and stops, expect three and a half to five hours each way.

Most Viator listings package Marrakech, Atlas Studios, and Ait Benhaddou into a single long day: roughly eleven hours door to door, with about seven of those on the road. It works, but plenty of travelers and most local guides recommend against cramming it into a single day trip. One overnight in Ouarzazate turns the same route into an unhurried two-day loop, with room to add the Kasbah of Telouet, the Fint oasis, or simply better light for photographs at Ait Benhaddou.

If you’d rather not drive the pass yourself, CTM and Supratours buses connect Marrakech to Ouarzazate in around four and a half to five hours for roughly 120–185 MAD, and Royal Air Maroc flies from Ouarzazate’s small airport (OZZ, eight kilometres from Atlas Studios) to Casablanca a handful of times a week. Grand taxis handle the Ouarzazate–Ait Benhaddou leg for around 150–200 MAD round trip with waiting time, and local green buses (lines 1 and 2, 4 MAD) run from Avenue Mohammed V out to the studios.

When to Go: Season, Ramadan, and a New Cinema City Rising

The comfortable window for visiting Ouarzazate runs roughly October to May, with April usually cited as the sweet spot: daytime highs around 27C, cooler nights, and the clearest light for photographing the pise. Summer is genuinely harsh — July regularly averages close to 40C, and the same conditions crews endured filming Gladiator (temperatures reportedly touched 45C on set) apply just as much to a visitor walking the open-air studio grounds. Winter days are mild, but nights can drop close to freezing, with a cold wind off the High Atlas.

One thing not worth planning around: Ouarzazate’s central Cinema Museum, across from the Kasbah Taourirt, has been closed since a fire damaged part of its exhibited sets in June 2024, with no confirmed reopening date as of this writing. Meanwhile, the industry the museum celebrates is expanding rather than shrinking. On 27 June 2026, Morocco’s Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication broke ground on a new International Cinema City at the entrance to Ouarzazate — a roughly 240-million-dirham (about USD 24–25 million) project on nearly 10.5 hectares, meant to finally give the region local post-production and training facilities that foreign shoots have historically had to source elsewhere. No completion date has been announced.

Beyond the Set: Extending into the Real Sahara and the Valley of Roses

Ouarzazate’s own backdrop is desert-adjacent rather than the Sahara proper — for actual dunes, most travelers push on toward Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi dunes, three to four hours further southeast, or toward Zagora. A multi-day circuit from Marrakech typically threads through Ouarzazate and the Dades Gorges on the way, camping a night among the dunes before looping back.

Closer to Ouarzazate, the Dades Valley, the Valley of Roses, and the palm oasis of Skoura draw on the same raw material as the film sets: the same pise, the same Berber building tradition, applied to still-inhabited villages and working palm groves rather than movie backlots. Skoura in particular still cultivates dates and Damask roses, and its own Kasbah Amridil once appeared on Moroccan banknotes.

• Carry cash in MAD for studio entry, Ait Benhaddou house-museums, and grand taxis — cards are rarely accepted outside hotels
• Use the official Ait Benhaddou entrance past the bridge, not a secondary access point charging an unofficial fee
• Pack for both extremes: sun protection for midday, a layer for cold desert nights outside summer
• Check Ramadan 2027 dates (roughly 8 February to 9 March) if traveling in early March, and plan meals accordingly
• Confirm the Ouarzazate Cinema Museum's reopening status before building it into your day
• Consider one night in Ouarzazate rather than a single 11-hour day trip from Marrakech

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