Some of the most memorable scenes in Game of Thrones were never set in Westeros at all. When Daenerys Targaryen marched across Slaver's Bay, freeing the Unsullied and taking city after city, the production did not build those cities on a soundstage. It came to Morocco, to the same southern light and the same red walls that Hollywood has used for generations. If you are looking for the real Game of Thrones filming locations in Morocco, they lie along one road, and it is a road we travel with every southern retreat.

Astapor, on the Atlantic

The first of the great slaver cities, Astapor, was filmed in Essaouira, the fortified port on the Atlantic coast. The sea ramparts of the Skala de la Ville, with their bronze cannons and their spray, became the walls where Daenerys bargains for an army and then turns it against its masters. Essaouira has doubled for the city with almost no disguise, because its eighteenth-century fortifications already carry the weight the story needs. The old medina behind the walls, with its whitewashed lanes and blue shutters, gave the production its crowds and its markets without a single set being built. Stand on those ramparts today, with the wind off the ocean, and the scene assembles itself around you; fans still walk the Skala to find the exact angle of the Unsullied ranks.

Yunkai, in the desert

Move inland, over the Atlas and down toward the Sahara, and you reach the second city. Aït Ben Haddou, the earthen ksar that has stood on the old caravan route for centuries, played Yunkai, the yellow city, as well as Pentos in the earlier chapters of the saga. Its towers and passages needed no invention; they were simply lit and filmed. The desert around it, all the way to the dunes, offered the empty distance that a marching army needs, and the same clear night skies that draw astronomers to this part of Morocco. This is the same UNESCO-listed kasbah that stood in for Rome in Gladiator and for Jerusalem in other films, a fortress whose full cinematic history we tell in our guide to the film road of Morocco.

The road between the cities

What makes Morocco extraordinary for a production like this is that two cities of the same imagined world sit a single day's drive apart, one on the ocean and one in the desert, joined by the studios of Ouarzazate in between. The country gave Daenerys her Atlantic and her Sahara in one journey. For a traveller, that is the gift the show revealed: you can stand on the ocean walls of Astapor in the morning and reach the desert of Yunkai by evening, crossing the Atlas in between. The most recent international productions filmed in Morocco have continued to draw on that range, among them Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, proof that the film road is as busy now as it has ever been.

On the film road with us

Every one of our southern retreats, on the route between Marrakech, the High Atlas and the dunes of the Sahara, now includes a programmed guided visit along this film road, with Aït Ben Haddou at its heart. It is not an excursion sold on the side. It is built into the week and arranged the way nothing on a coach tour ever is: access in the quiet hours before the crowds arrive, a local guide who has worked on the sets, and a private table most travellers never find. You walk the walls of Yunkai when the light is long and the ksar is nearly empty. It is the difference between visiting a location and understanding it.

Why our prices are what they are

There are many ways to chase these locations, and most are ordinary. The tour buses arrive at midday, when the light is flat and the kasbah is full. The roadside restaurants serve the same plate to everyone. This is exactly what we exist to avoid. In every destination we work in, we keep only the best: the camps and riads that receive one group at a time, the guides who carry real knowledge, the drivers who know which pass to take at which hour. That selection is the reason our southern retreats are priced the way they are. A week with us is not a tour with a premium label. It is the full privatisation of an experience, arranged around a single small group so that nothing is shared with strangers and nothing is left to chance.

This is the Morocco behind the Iron Throne: Essaouira for the sea, Aït Ben Haddou for the desert, Ouarzazate for everything in between. It is already inside our southern retreats between Marrakech, the Atlas and the Sahara, programmed, guided and included, so that your only task is to walk the same walls the camera chose, and to be fully present while you do.