Morocco · Béni Mellal-Khénifra
Where to Stay in Beni Mellal, Béni Mellal-Khénifra
Beni Mellal is a town of central Morocco at the foot of the Middle Atlas, a green farming city of orange groves and springs on the edge of the Tadla plain.
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Where to stay in Beni Mellal
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Where you stay in Beni Mellal turns on the town or the spring. The streets around the centre keep the kasbah, the markets, and the cafés within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the city. The plain runs green below.
Palms shade the streets. Out toward Ain Asserdoun and the mountains, the town gives way to the spring gardens, the olive groves, and the cedar heights. A room by the hills trades the streets for the terraced gardens, the cool spring pools, and the long views over the Tadla.
The mountains rise green behind. Stay downtown for the markets, or by the spring for the gardens. Down from Ain Asserdoun, Beni Mellal spreads out on the flat.
About Beni Mellal
Beni Mellal is the garden town of the Tadla.
What is Beni Mellal known for?
At the foot of the Middle Atlas in central Morocco, where springs pour from the mountain onto the plain, it is a rich farming city, and it keeps the great spring of Ain Asserdoun and its gardens below the hills, an old kasbah guarding the town, the orange and olive groves of the Tadla plain, and the high cedar mountains of the Atlas rising behind. The green plain runs wide. The mountains wall the south.
What are the main landmarks in Beni Mellal?
The spring of Ain Asserdoun is the pride of Beni Mellal. The great cold spring gushing from the foot of the mountain into terraced gardens and pools, with an old fort on the hill above, draws the town on hot days, the emblem of the city, below the Atlas. A red kasbah holds the centre.
The old earthen kasbah still stands in the town, while the olive groves, the mountain gorges, and the Tadla fields mark the country around Beni Mellal.
What is the history of Beni Mellal?
Beni Mellal grew around a spring. Where the great spring of Ain Asserdoun pours cold from the foot of the Atlas, people have farmed and watered their fields for ages, and a town of the Berber Tadla grew below the hills. A sultan walled the town.
In the days of the old dynasties a kasbah of red earth was raised to guard the plain and its water, and Beni Mellal became a market of the fertile Tadla. Water made it rich. The spring and the rivers off the mountains fed a great garden of oranges, olives, and grain on the plain, and the town lived by its farms and its market below the Atlas.
The mountains gave more. Cedar forests, high pastures, and the wild gorges of the Middle Atlas rose behind the town, and Beni Mellal grew into a busy provincial city of the Tadla, keeping its spring, its kasbah, and its orchards. The water still runs from the hills.
Beni Mellal keeps its gardens and its spring below the Atlas.
Where is Beni Mellal?
Beni Mellal lies in the middle of Morocco, at the foot of the Middle Atlas above the Tadla plain. The town sits on the lower slopes where springs break from the mountain and water the fields below, between the high cedar-clad Atlas and the wide flat farmland of the Tadla, with orchards spreading over the plain. Green orchards fill the plain.
The mountains rise steep behind.
What is the climate of Beni Mellal?
Beni Mellal sits under a dry Mediterranean sky. Hot dry summers and mild wet winters cross the plain, with scorching sun in summer and rain and mountain snow in winter. Summer heat presses hard on the Tadla.
Winter greens the fields.
How do you get to Beni Mellal?
Beni Mellal lies in central Morocco, on the plain below the Middle Atlas. Roads and buses run to it across the Tadla from Casablanca and up from Marrakesh, and mountain roads climb into the Atlas. Trucks haul the oranges.
Casablanca lies northwest by road.
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Updated August 2026