Sky Bar is the reason non-guests keep walking into the Bab Hotel. It is the rooftop cocktail and tapas lounge crowning one of Guéliz's original design hotels, and it stays open to anyone, not just the people staying upstairs.
The Bab Hotel sits in the heart of Guéliz, at the corner of Boulevard Mansour Eddahbi and Rue Mohammed El Beqal, the modern-district grid where Marrakech keeps most of its licensed bars and restaurants. The Rooftop Guide describes Sky Bar as a modern cocktail-and-tapas lounge with a menu of crafted cocktails, Moroccan and French wines, bubbles, premium spirits and fresh juices. That breadth matters in a city where a serious drinks list usually means a hotel address, and this is one of the better ones in the neighbourhood.
The room reads as part terrace, part lounge. You get the open-air rooftop, a long bar, and the kind of low seating built for staying put, plus the hotel's wider run of patio, pool, library and fireplace spaces below. By day it works for a relaxed drink in the sun; after dark it tightens into a sophisticated lounge with a resident DJ keeping the tempo.
Order a cocktail and a few tapas and you have used the place correctly. The bar leans on a crafted cocktail list backed by a genuine wine selection, so a Moroccan Guérrouane or a French red by the glass is an easy alternative to a mixed drink. Expect upper-tier Guéliz pricing, a $$$ rooftop where the setting and the list justify the bill rather than undercut it. The small tapas menu is there to graze on, not to anchor a full dinner, so treat the food as a partner to the drinks.
The rhythm of the night is the thing to plan around. Early evening on the roof catches the Guéliz light and the calmer, sun-lounger version of the bar. Later, the DJ lifts the mood and the lounge fills with a mix of hotel guests, Guéliz residents and visitors who came specifically for the roof. Because it sits in the modern district rather than the medina, it is an easy taxi or walk from most Guéliz and Hivernage hotels.
Sky Bar suits an after-work drink with a view, a polished start to a Guéliz night, and travellers who want a reliable licensed bar without hunting through the old city. It is the wrong pick if you came to Marrakech for medina rooftops and stork-nest views; for those, the old town has its own addresses. For an in-town contrast, the rooftop at Kechmara and cocktails at Baromètre are minutes away. Find it in our guide to the Marrakech beer-and-bar map, the wider Marrakech bar guide, and our editorial round-up of the city's best bars.
Guéliz is the practical reason this rooftop works. The district holds most of Marrakech's licensed bars within walking distance of each other, so Sky Bar slots naturally into a Guéliz crawl rather than asking you to commit a whole evening to one address. The Bab Hotel itself has long been a design-led fixture in the neighbourhood, and the rooftop is the part of it that the city, not just its guests, actually uses. The Rooftop Guide flags the breadth of the list, from cocktails and bubbles to Moroccan and French wines, which is wider than most hotel bars bother with. Treat it as a polished opening drink with a view, then walk on to dinner or another bar nearby; that is how Guéliz residents tend to use it, and it plays to the room's strengths.
Best time to go is an early-evening arrival for a sunset drink on the roof, or later on a weekend when the DJ is on and the lounge is at full tilt. Daytime visits are the quietest, and the easiest way to land a good seat at the rail.
