Sky Bar at Renaissance Marrakech

Sky Bar crowns the Hotel la Renaissance on the corner of Place du 16 Novembre, the busiest junction in Gueliz, Marrakech's modern district. The draw is the seventh floor sightline. From the rail you look east across the rooftops toward the medina and the Koutoubia minaret, and on a clear afternoon the snow line of the High Atlas runs along the horizon behind it.

This is a view bar first and a cocktail bar second, and it helps to arrive knowing that. The Marrakech Riad guide flagged it years ago as one of the few rooftops in the new town open to anyone willing to ride the lobby elevator up, not just hotel guests. That access is the point. You get a panorama usually reserved for riad terraces without booking a room.

Reviews on Tripadvisor split predictably. The setting earns near universal praise, while service speed and food draw the complaints, so calibrate your expectations to a hotel rooftop rather than a dedicated drinks den. Order simply, sit early, and let the skyline do the work.

The venue has been presenting itself as MySky Rooftop on the hotel's own site, a rebrand of the same top floor space. For our editors it still belongs in the conversation about the best rooftop bars in Marrakech for one specific reason: the timing of the light over Gueliz at dusk is hard to beat.