YOUR 'GAME OF THRONES' ADVENTURES IN OUARZAZATE!
AÏT BEN-HADDOU AND ATLAS STUDIOS: Pentos and Yunkai in the show.
In inland Morocco, within a distance of 30 kilometres from the city of Ouarzazate and 180 kilometres away from Marrakech, it is located Ksar of Aït Ben-Haddou. ‘Ksar’ means fortified city and this group of earthen buildings within high walls of Berber origin is part of the UNESCO World Heritage.
At the gateway to the desert, Aït Ben-Haddou offers a unique landscape of vibrant reddish brown colours that the series transformed into the cities of Pentos and Yunkai, in Essos. You too can visit this ancient city featured in Game of Thrones with this tour from Marrakech!
What we first see in season one is Pentos. This is the place we met Daenerys Targaryen, exiled with her brother Viserys in this Free City near the Narrow Sesa.
Without exiting the homonymous region of Ouarzazate, some of the scenes set in Pentos were also filmed in the Atlas Corporation Studios. A filming complex located only 25 kilometres away from Aït Ben-Haddou.
Atlas Corporation is the biggest filming studio in the entire world, with more than 30.000 square metres of desert land. Not only the Game of Thrones team have used its facilities, other big film productions such as Gladiator, Babel or The Mummy have shot in there. This massive movie set is open to the public (as long as it is not being used for filming that day).
Are you curious to enter this cinematic land? Here you have two top activities that will bring you here: a 2-day excursion across the desert from Marrakech and a 3-day complete tour from Fes, an ‘Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny’ filming location!
Now let’s get back to the fortified city of Aït Ben-Haddou again for a moment, because in season three this city also became the slaver city of Yunkia.
Daenerys “came back” to this Moroccan spot (this time with Jorah Mormont, Missandei and Grey Warm and an entire army of the Unsullied and three dragons) to liberate the city.
The Walls of Aït Ben-Haddou witnessed how the people of Yunkia hailed Daenerys with the cry of “Mysha” (mother). Can you thing of a movie set in the desert with more history?
