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Just a short flight from the United Kingdom, Marrakesh, in Morocco, is a beautiful and important city to visit and explore its history. School trips to Marrakesh will take you into the heart of this amazing city and expose you to cultural and historical aspects that you would not get elsewhere. Located in the heart of the central region of this northwestern African nation, Marrakesh is simply teeming with history. School trips to the city will set the itinerary to allow you to visit both the new and old parts; each can take days to explore, and even then you will only be able to scratch the surface. For historical and cultural context, it is more interesting to spend most of your time exploring the Medina, or Old City, rather than the modern Gueliz, where you can find the amenities of any other major, international city. The Souks One of the most popular experiences people who visit Marrakesh report on is the opportunity to haggle in the souks and learn about its history. School trips to the souks will take adventurous students into the oldest Berber markets in the city; the honeycomb of alleyways appear to go on forever and are filled with a plethora of stores and salesmen hawking their wares. Traditionally, the souks were divided into different areas of retail, but they tend to overlap now, as the tourist trade becomes more and more an important part of the economy. The huge Souk Semmarine sells anything and everything you can imagine, while the Rahba Qedima deals more in local crafts and hand-woven textile items. If you get peckish while shopping, visit the Souk Ableuh for incredible fat olives and the Souk Kchacha for mountains of dried nuts and fruit, then wash it all down with scalding sweet tea from the Rahba Qedima souk. Saadian Tombs and the Koutoubia Mosque As one of the more unusual aspects of the city's history, school trips to the Saadian Tombs will take students into the tombs that were built in the late 1500s for Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur. They were only discovered in 1917 and have now been beautifully restored with magnificent stucco work. From these impressive tombs, you can return back to Djemaa El-Fna Square and visit the Koutoubia Mosque, which is the largest mosque in Marrakesh. The mosque has a plaza and lovely gardens to wander around. Its minaret was completed between 1184 and 1199 and rises 77 metres into the sky. Also known as the Bookseller's Mosque, the name reflects its close proximity to the bookseller's souk, which is located nearby, and also the respect and importance the bookselling trade had. At night the minaret is floodlit and the square around it comes alive as the heart of the city's nightlife - with street vendors, storytellers and more. Angela Bowden works for EST (Equity School Travel), the UK's largest educational travel company, providing history school trips for secondary schools, primary schools and colleges. School trips with EST can encompass a wide range of learning opportunities in worldwide destinations.
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