Where Was The Odyssey Filmed in Morocco? Ait Benhaddou & Essaouira Guide

When Christopher Nolan started filming The Odyssey in early 2025, his first stop was not a studio.
It was a 900-year-old village made of packed earth in southern Morocco. That tells you everything
about what kind of film this is — and why Morocco looked the way it did on screen.

The film opened on July 17, 2026 to $264 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Since then,
people have been searching for the locations. Most of the Moroccan ones are places we take people
to on private tours — so we wrote this guide.

Ait Benhaddou — This is Troy

The production team arrived at Ait Benhaddou in February 2025 to film the fall of Troy —
the opening sequence of the movie, before Odysseus begins his journey home.
It was the first location of the entire shoot.

To turn the ksar into Troy, the crew built 60 temporary structures on site, including the pillared
Temple of Athena and the city gates, covering about 2.5 acres. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema
rigged banks of portable LEDs across the village to supplement the flames for the destruction sequence,
all shot on IMAX 70mm cameras.

“A World Heritage Site that has been playing other people’s cities since David Lean drove through in 1962.”

Ait Benhaddou is not new to Hollywood. It has appeared in Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator,
Game of Thrones, and The Mummy. But The Odyssey is its biggest production yet,
and right now it is the most searched filming location in Morocco.

Essaouira — The Trojan Horse Beach

After Troy falls in the film, the story moves to the coast. The beaches around Essaouira
were used for the scene where the Trojan Horse is discovered, half-buried in the sand,
and for the moment Odysseus and his men launch their boats and begin the long voyage home.

The production placed a 35-foot Trojan Horse on the Atlantic shoreline for filming.
In Arabic, Essaouira means “little picture.” In IMAX, it looks anything but small.

Essaouira is on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, about 175km west of Marrakech — roughly a
three-hour drive. It is a walled UNESCO city with a blue-and-white medina, a working
fishing port, and some of the windiest, most dramatic beaches in North Africa.
It is also one of the few places in Morocco where you can ride horses on the beach —
which, given the context, is a pretty memorable thing to do here.

Other Morocco Locations in the Film

Marrakech and the Atlas Foothills

Additional scenes were filmed in and around Marrakech, including the market town of
Tahanaoute in El Haouz, about 30km south of the city. These locations provided
background texture for the ancient city sequences.

Ouarzazate

The production was based out of Ouarzazate for much of the Moroccan shoot.
Known as the Hollywood of Morocco, Ouarzazate has hosted more major film productions
than almost anywhere else on the continent. Atlas Film Studios — one of the largest
outdoor film studios in the world — is here.

How to Visit All of These in One Trip

The good news is that Ait Benhaddou, Ouarzazate, and Essaouira are all routes we
already run private tours through. A 7-day private tour from Marrakech can cover
all the main filming locations comfortably — with time to actually explore each one,
not just drive past them.

We have put together a dedicated Odyssey tour that starts in Marrakech, crosses the
High Atlas to Ait Benhaddou and Ouarzazate, then heads west to Essaouira for the
beach and the coastline where the Trojan Horse scenes were shot.
Horse riding on the beach is included.