Dar Si Said, the National Museum of Weaving and Carpets

One family, two palaces, three lanes apart

The house was built between 1894 and 1900 by Si Said ibn Musa, a vizier and minister of defence, whose brother Ba Ahmad ibn Musa was Grand Vizier to Sultan Abdelaziz and the builder of the Bahia Palace a few minutes to the south. The two buildings share their craftsmen, their painted cedar and their zellij vocabulary, which is why a visitor who has done the Bahia in the morning walks into this one with a distinct sense of having seen the hand before.

What is different is the plan. Dar Si Said goes upward as well as outward: there is a grand reception hall on the upper floor and a large riad garden with a central pavilion, where the Bahia spreads sideways across eight hectares at ground level. The upper hall is the room people photograph, and it is the one part of the visit that is worth slowing down for.

From private house to national museum

The building was allocated in 1930 to hold artisan workshops and a museum of indigenous arts, and by 1957 it had formally split in two, one part for craftsmen's workshops and one for art and traditional heritage. That double life explains the collection: this was a place for making before it was a place for showing.

After a restoration by the Fondation Nationale des Musees the museum reopened in 2018 under a new name, the Musee National du Tissage et du Tapis, the national museum of weaving and carpets, and the collection was rebuilt around textiles rather than around general decorative arts. The September 2023 earthquake damaged the building and closed it for repairs. The foundation now publishes full opening hours for it again, which is the evidence that the repairs are done; it publishes nothing about what the earthquake took.

The object that left

For decades the most famous thing in this house was not a carpet. It was an Andalusi marble basin carved at Madinat al-Zahra between 1002 and 1007, brought to Marrakech by the Almoravids and later kept here. It has been returned to the Ben Youssef Madrasa, so if that basin is what you came for, this is the wrong door.

The connection is worth holding on to, because the same Almoravid century produced the Almoravid Koubba five minutes from where the basin now stands.

The foundation describes the holding as a rich and varied collection of Moroccan carpets and weavings from every region, and the regional labels are the thing to read. Urban carpets from the cities are knotted, dense and formal. Rural weaving from the High Atlas, the Anti Atlas, the Sous and the Tensift is flat woven, looser, and carries the pattern languages of the groups that made it: the hanbel, the striped flatweave that does the work of a rug and a blanket; the handira, the wedding cape sewn with sequins that catches every light in the room; caftans, and the woodwork, jewellery, pottery, ceramics, weapons and archaeological pieces that came with the older museum and stayed.

What the labels give you is a map of the country by loom. Two hours south of here, in the valleys the Atlas day trips climb into, the same patterns are still being woven, which is why this museum is the best possible preparation for a carpet shop in the souks. You learn to tell a knotted urban rug from a flatweave, and a modern synthetic dye from an old one, before anyone offers you tea.

The building carries half the visit. The riad garden and the central pavilion at ground level, the painted cedar ceilings, the zellij, the carved plaster and the upper reception hall with its dome. Take the stairs before the last room; the light through the upper hall is best in the middle of the day and the room empties as soon as a group leaves.

• Urban knotted carpets against rural flatweaves, the collection's central contrast
• Hanbel flatweaves and sequinned handira wedding capes from the Atlas
• Woodwork, jewellery, ceramics, weapons and archaeological pieces from the earlier museum
• The riad garden and pavilion at ground level
• The upper reception hall, the best single room in the building

Every figure below was read on each venue's own page in Q3 2026. The point of the table is the second column: this is the only museum in the city that takes a Monday off, and the ones that do close weekly close on different days from each other.

If your Monday is fixed

Swap this museum for the Bahia Palace, which is three minutes away, open, and shares the same craftsmen. If it is the textiles you want rather than the architecture, the souks are open on a Monday and the souks and shopping page explains what to look at and what to pay. The two day itinerary puts this museum on the second morning for exactly this reason.

The foundation publishes a single line for adults, 30 dirhams, with no nationality split at all. Every other ticket authority in Marrakech splits its tariff. The Ministry of Culture charges a foreign adult $10.65 (100 MAD) at the Bahia, El Badi, the Saadian Tombs and the Koubba where a Moroccan national or resident pays $3.20 (30 MAD). The Ministere des Habous charges $5.33 (50 MAD) at the madrasa against $2.13 (20 MAD). The Fondation Jardin Majorelle charges $18.11 (170 MAD) against $7.99 (75 MAD). Here, a visitor and a resident pay the same $3.20 (30 MAD), and the only distinction published is age.

The age line is incomplete and worth knowing before you arrive with a family: the foundation publishes 10 dirhams for children over 12 and states nothing at all for children under 12. Whether that means free, or the same 10 dirhams, or something else, is not published anywhere we could reach, so ask at the desk and carry small notes.

There is no combined ticket in this city and none that includes this museum. Nothing links the four authorities, no city pass exists, and the closest thing to a two for one is the Maison de la Photographie ticket, which also opens the Musee de la Musique. The tickets index sets out the whole layer, and what Marrakech costs puts the entries against the rest of a day's spending.

- It is the only museum in Marrakech with no foreign price. Adults 30 dirhams, full stop, where four other authorities in the same city publish two columns [fnm.ma/museums/30, read in Q3 2026]. - The foundation sells nothing online, however it looks. The museum page shows a ticket button, but its tariffs page, practical information page and museums index all returned 404 and the ticketing subdomain did not resolve [fetched in Q3 2026]. - The palace was built by the brother of the man who built the Bahia, between 1894 and 1900, which is why the two buildings share a hand [English Wikipedia, Dar Si Said]. - The famous Almoravid marble basin is no longer here. Carved at Madinat al-Zahra between 1002 and 1007, it has been returned to the Ben Youssef Madrasa [English Wikipedia, Dar Si Said]. - The building was closed by the September 2023 earthquake and the foundation publishes no account of the damage; the evidence that it reopened is that full hours are published again [English Wikipedia, Dar Si Said; fnm.ma/museums/30].

The address is Derb El Bahia, in the Riad Zitoun Jdid quarter of the medina, and the derb is a short lane rather than a street with numbers. From Jemaa el-Fna walk south east down Riad Zitoun el-Jdid for about ten minutes: it is one of the medina's few long, straight, legible streets, lined with shops the whole way, and it delivers you into the palace quarter without a single decision. The museum door is on the left before the Bahia, set back in its lane.

From the Bahia Palace it is three minutes on foot, which is the pairing that makes the most sense of the morning. From the Place des Ferblantiers and the Mellah it is about seven. A petit taxi can bring you to the end of Riad Zitoun el-Jdid or to the Place des Ferblantiers, never to the door; the meter is compulsory in Moroccan law and the getting around page explains what to do when a driver does not use it.

The museum publishes no accessibility statement, which puts it with eight of the ten venues we checked. The palace has ground floor courtyards, a garden and its best room up a flight of stairs, so a visitor with limited mobility will see most but not all of it.

• From Jemaa el-Fna: about 10 minutes down Riad Zitoun el-Jdid, no turns to remember
• From the Bahia Palace: 3 minutes, the natural pairing
• From Place des Ferblantiers: about 7 minutes
• No taxi reaches the door; the last stretch is on foot
• No published accessibility statement; the upper hall is up stairs

Take it with the palace quarter, not on its own. The straightforward morning is the Bahia Palace at opening, this museum straight afterwards, then south to El Badi and the Saadian Tombs before the Ministry monuments shut at 17:00. That is four entries for about $27 in tickets, and this one is the cheapest of them by a distance.

If you are shopping later in the trip, do the museum first. An hour spent learning the difference between a knotted urban carpet and an Atlas flatweave changes what happens to you in the souks. Everything else with hours, prices and a map is on the museums page, and the rest of the guide starts from the homepage.