Tanneries of Marrakech

The tanneries of Marrakech are where leather is made the way it has been made for a thousand years — animal hides soaked in vats of pigeon dung, quicklime, and vegetable dyes in open-air pits that produce the leather goods sold throughout the souks. The process is physically demanding, visually dramatic, and olfactorily challenging — the smell of the tanneries, a combination of animal skin, dung, and chemical treatment, is intense enough that visitors are traditionally offered sprigs of mint to hold under their noses.

The main tannery complex near Bab Debbagh consists of dozens of stone vats sunk into the ground, each filled with a different coloured liquid — white (lime for hair removal), brown (tanning agents), red (poppy), yellow (saffron), and blue (indigo). Workers stand in the vats up to their waists, treading the hides with their feet in a process that relies on human labour rather than machinery. The view from the surrounding leather shops' terraces — looking down into the pits of colour with the medina walls behind — is one of Marrakech's most photographed scenes.

The tanneries are a functioning workplace, not a tourist attraction, and visiting requires navigating the leather shops that surround the viewing terraces (the shopkeepers grant access in exchange for the expectation, though not the obligation, of a purchase). The leather goods — bags, shoes, belts, jackets — are made from the hides tanned in the pits below, and buying directly from the tannery shops (with appropriate bargaining) can produce quality leather at prices significantly below the tourist souks.