Ait Benhaddou

Dades Valley and Ait Benhaddou is the valley of one-thousand Kasbahs, many of the kasbahs are in a ruinous state but they are evocative of a time past.

This is also a UNESCO heritage site.

This area is famous with the Movie industry as several large films were filmed here like the Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazareth about 26 in total, you can still see the area that Gladiator was filmed in and some set remains. We were told that it took 4 months to build the set for Gladiator, they used 2000 extras from the local area but it only took 4 days for the filming. There were pictures of a young slim Russell Crowe!

This village, believe it or not, is still lived in by some of the original families of the Berbers.

As you can imagine when it rains a lot of it disappears because it is only built of mud and straw, no cement or rebar as is the new construction of today.

UNESCO is helping to maintain the exterior only of this site.

It just looks like a really cool sandcastle!