The Gueliz Neighbourhood in Marrakech

In contrast to the Medina neighbourhood, Gueliz constitutes the most modern quarter of the city of Marrakech. It was built by the French and is the residential area of well-off Moroccans and most Europeans. Its name comes from the French word "église", meaning "church", since it was in this neighbourhood that the only Christian church in the city was built, during the French protectorate.  

Architecture-wise, Gueliz is quite a varied neighbourhood, where a few colonial buildings, structures from the 1980s, small houses and new luxury apartment buildings coexist in a strange monochromatic harmony.
 
It is the best area in the city for shopping European products. Although one may find virtually anything in the souks in the Medina, you will not find Zara shops or McDonald's restaurants. We could say that, in this sense, Gueliz is a sort of "European relief" to the French colonizers. The atmosphere is rather metropolitan and modern, and traffic is simply infernal during rush hours. There are not too many green areas, besides the beautiful El Harti Park.
 
You can access Gueliz easily by taxi or bus and there are plenty of hotels for all kinds of budgets. If you are looking for a pleasant place to rest from the frantic busyness of the Medina, Gueliz offers excellent places, such as the legendary Café de la Poste, the oldest café in Marrakech, built during the time of the protectorate. There, you can have lunch or enjoy an ice cream or a delicious mint tea. The treatment given by the staff is charming, and it is an ideal place to go with children.  

Same as with hotels, there are restaurants for all budgets, from fast-food bistros to enormously elegant restaurants that offer dinner-shows with belly dancers and variety shows or vaudevilles.  

In the evening, Gueliz is probably the best area to visit if you do not have your own vehicle. There are numerous pubs and venues with live music. African'Chic, Montecristo, and Music Hall are some of the most fashionable places for young people. Be careful with prices, as they can be higher than in Europe. In this kind of places, you can drink alcohol, so it is not uncommon to find inebriated people in the small hours, so be careful with cars. 

These nightlife hotspots are also meeting places for prostitutes. We could definitely devote several articles to this subject. They are usually very young Moroccan girls, often repudiated by their family and by society. Many of them are single mothers or wives abandoned by their husband. Addiction to drugs and alcohol is starting to affect these beautiful women who walk the streets of Marrakech in search of clients, European and Moroccan, who not always treat them with the respect they deserve. They are, together with European and not many Moroccan women, the very few women who enjoy economic independence and freedom to go out in the evening on their own. 

Another sad face of Gueliz is beggar kids. It is quite common to find, at any time of the day, but mostly in the small hours, kids badly dressed in rags begging for money at the entrance of these fashionable pubs and venues. The contrast offers quite impressive images: elegant ladies and gentlemen leaving the nightclub, prostitutes, wrongly called "luxury" prostitutes, with provocative miniskirts and high-heeled shoes, walking through streets full of bare-foot and ragged minors constitute a frequent photograph of the most fashionable Marrakech.

So, as you can see, Marrakech is a fascinating city of contrasts, where different cultures, languages, religions, and lifestyles overlap and create a captivating kaleidoscope of images and sensations.