Ask where Gladiator was filmed and you will get more than one honest answer, because Ridley Scott built his Rome across three countries. But the half that most people remember, the sun, the dust, the province where Maximus is enslaved and first fights for his life, was made in Morocco. Twenty-five years on, that same ground is drawing directors again, and it is the ground our southern retreats cross on the film road between Marrakech and the Sahara.

Three countries, one film

The opening battle against the tribes of Germania was shot at Bourne Wood in Surrey, England, a forest Ridley Scott has returned to throughout his career. The great Colosseum of Rome was realised through a partial set and digital work, with location filming at Fort Ricasoli on Malta standing in for the arena's scale. Everything with the weight of the ancient south, the deserts and the provincial world beyond the capital, was filmed in Morocco. Ridley Scott has always preferred to film the real thing wherever he can, and for the sun-scorched world of the empire's edge there was no substitute for the Moroccan south. It is the Moroccan half that gives the film its heat and its silence.

The Morocco of Maximus

After his fall, Maximus is sold into slavery in the North African province of Zucchabar, and those scenes were filmed at Aït Ben Haddou and around Ouarzazate. The earthen ksar, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the old caravan road, became the slave market and the provincial arena where a general learns to fight as an entertainer. Proximo's troupe of fighters, the dusty holding cells and the roar of a provincial crowd were all staged here, far from any Roman set. The same walls have since played Jerusalem, ancient Egypt and the city of Yunkai in Game of Thrones, a history we tell in full in our guide to the film road of Morocco. Standing inside the ksar at dawn, you recognise the light before you recognise the place.

Gladiator II returns to the desert

The story did not end with the first film. When Ridley Scott came back for Gladiator II, he returned to Morocco once more, filming again in the desert around Ouarzazate alongside work on Malta and in England. A generation of crews and craftspeople here has now worked on both films, and the roads, the kasbahs and the studios remember them. For the people of Ouarzazate, a Ridley Scott production is less an event than a homecoming, and the craft passed down between the two films is part of why the region keeps its place in world cinema. The most recent international productions filmed in Morocco run well beyond Rome, among them Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, but for many travellers it is still Gladiator that first put this desert on the map.

On the film road with us

Every one of our southern retreats, on the route between Marrakech, the High Atlas passes and the dunes of the Sahara, now includes a programmed guided visit along this film road, with Aït Ben Haddou at its centre. It is not an excursion sold on the side. It is built into the week and arranged the way nothing on a coach itinerary ever is: access in the quiet hours before the day crowds arrive, a local guide who has worked on the sets, and a private table most travellers never find. You stand where Maximus stood, without the crowd and without the heat of midday, and you feel the scale of the arena precisely because it is quiet.

Why we keep only the best

There are many ways to see the Gladiator locations, and most of them are ordinary. The tour buses arrive at noon, when the light is flat and the kasbah is full. The roadside restaurants serve the same plate to everyone. This is precisely 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 rather than a memorised script, 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 added. 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.

So where was Gladiator filmed? In England, in Malta, and above all in the south of Morocco, in the kasbah and the desert that Ridley Scott chose twice. That desert 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 into the frame and be present.