The Berber Museum — Musée Berbère
Housed in the lower floors of the original Villa Majorelle — the cobalt-blue building that Jacques Majorelle built in the 1920s as his private studio and residence — the Berber Museum is one of the most important dedicated collections of Amazigh (Berber) culture anywhere in Morocco. The museum opened in 2011 under the stewardship of Pierre Bergé, who had spent years personally acquiring the objects that fill its rooms, guided by a conviction that the cultural heritage of Morocco's indigenous Berber populations deserved serious scholarly presentation and broad public recognition.
The museum's collection comprises over 600 individual artefacts spanning centuries of Amazigh artistic and material culture. These objects were gathered from across the Maghreb — from the High Atlas mountains, the Anti-Atlas, the Draa Valley, the Rif mountains and the Saharan pre-Saharan regions — and represent the full geographic and cultural diversity of a people whose history in North Africa predates Arab, Roman and even Phoenician settlement by thousands of years.
The displays are organised thematically rather than chronologically, allowing visitors to understand the coherence of Amazigh material culture across different regions and periods. Key sections include an extensive jewellery collection, a textile and weaving room, a display of woodwork and carpentry, and a pottery and ceramics gallery. Explanatory texts are available in French, Arabic and English, and the museum's curation reflects genuine scholarly rigour rather than the kind of superficial ethnographic display that too often accompanies North African heritage collections.
Berber Museum — Collection Highlights
The jewellery collection is arguably the most spectacular component of the Berber Museum. Amazigh women have traditionally worn jewellery as a visible demonstration of wealth, social status and cultural identity — with elaborately worked silver pieces being passed from mother to daughter as both practical asset and symbolic inheritance. The museum's collection spans techniques including granulation, filigree, enamelling and stone-setting, with pieces incorporating amber, coral, carnelian and turquoise alongside silver. Some of the most striking pieces are the elaborate fibulae — cloak clasps — that were worn in pairs connected by a decorative chain across the front of a woman's dress.
The textile collection provides an equally rich survey of Amazigh weaving traditions. Berber carpets are internationally renowned, but the museum presents woven items that range far beyond floor coverings: Handira marriage blankets, whose lustrous wool and sequin surface were believed to protect the bride and invite prosperity; ceremonial belts and sashes worked in geometric patterns; and finely embroidered head coverings from different mountain communities, each with distinctive motifs that identified the wearer's village and lineage to anyone who knew how to read them.
The woodwork collection includes elaborately carved doors, domestic furniture, storage chests and musical instruments — particularly the frame drums and string instruments of Gnawa tradition. The pottery section demonstrates the range of techniques employed by Amazigh potters in different regions, from the geometric painted wares of the Rif to the unglazed, fire-blackened vessels of the High Atlas communities. Throughout, the museum's lighting — discreet and directional — ensures that objects are seen in optimal conditions without compromising the atmospheric quality of the villa's original interior spaces.
Photography is permitted without flash in most sections of the Berber Museum. Tripods and professional equipment require prior written permission from the museum administration. Bags must be left in the provided storage area near the entrance before entering the galleries.
Museum Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech (MYSLM)
The Museum Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech — universally known by its acronym MYSLM — opened on 19 October 2017 in a purpose-built building immediately adjacent to Jardin Majorelle on the Rue Yves Saint Laurent. The museum's opening marked the completion of a cultural campus that had been conceived by Pierre Bergé before his death in September 2017 — he died just weeks before seeing the project completed, having devoted the final years of his life to ensuring that both the garden and the museum would be properly endowed and permanently protected.
The building itself was designed by the French architectural practice Studio KO — architects Karl Oursin and Olivier Marty, who also designed the YSL Museum in Paris. The Marrakech building is a sophisticated exercise in contextual Modernism: its exterior is clad in a terracotta-coloured perforated screen that references traditional Moroccan mashrabiyya latticework while maintaining a distinctly contemporary identity. The building's angular massing and warm material palette complement without imitating the historic urban grain of Guéliz.
The museum's interior offers approximately 4,000 square metres of permanent and temporary exhibition space. Its central mission is to preserve, study and present the creative work of Yves Saint Laurent — whose 44-year career as a couturier produced work that fundamentally changed the relationship between fashion, art and gender. The permanent collection spans Saint Laurent's entire career, from his early years at Christian Dior, through the establishment of his own fashion house in 1961, to his retirement in 2002.
MYSLM — What the Museum Contains
The MYSLM's permanent displays are arranged along a clear narrative arc that traces Saint Laurent's development as a designer and the ways in which Marrakech in particular influenced his work. Visitors encounter a chronological survey of his most significant collections, with individual garments displayed as the works of art they unquestionably are: mounted on custom mannequins in temperature-controlled glass cases, lit to emphasise the cut and movement of each piece, and accompanied by contextual information about the collection to which each garment belonged.
The museum holds an exceptional archive of sketches, working drawings, fabric samples, photographs and correspondence that document Saint Laurent's creative process in extraordinary detail. Selections from this archive are displayed in dedicated study rooms, allowing visitors who wish to go deeper into the designer's working methods to do so at their own pace. The archive holdings in Marrakech are complemented by the main archive at the Fondation Pierre Bergé — Yves Saint Laurent in Paris.
A section of the museum is dedicated specifically to the relationship between Saint Laurent and Marrakech: the colours, patterns and cultural references of Morocco that filtered so consistently through his work, from the Saharienne jacket of 1967 to the elaborate embroideries of later couture collections. This section includes historical photographs of the designer in the garden and in the city, letters and diary entries documenting his responses to the place, and a series of short films that bring his creative dialogue with Morocco to life in an accessible and visually compelling way.
The museum also operates a dedicated research library — the Bibliothèque Majorelle — which is open by appointment to scholars working on fashion history, textile culture and the art of North Africa. The ground floor includes a boutique selling books, prints and design objects related to the museum's collections, and a café offering Moroccan refreshments.
Practical Information for Museum Visitors
The Berber Museum and MYSLM have separate admission tickets and separate opening hours. The Berber Museum is accessed through the main Jardin Majorelle entrance, so its ticket is often combined with garden admission. MYSLM is entered directly from the Rue Yves Saint Laurent, adjacent to the garden. A combined ticket covering the garden, the Berber Museum and MYSLM offers the best value for visitors intending to see all three attractions.
Both museums have dedicated accessible entrances and are fully wheelchair accessible. Audio guides are available in French, English, Arabic and Spanish at both venues. The museums are busiest in the mid-morning; visiting later in the afternoon, when coach tour groups have typically departed, usually allows a more contemplative experience of the collections. Temporary exhibitions change approximately three times per year at MYSLM; check current programming directly with the museum before your visit.
Bags and large items of photography equipment must be checked at the cloakroom in each museum. Personal photography for non-commercial purposes is generally permitted without flash; specific rooms may have additional restrictions. Commercial photography and filming always require advance written permission from the museum communications department.
The museum gift shops carry an excellent range of publications on Amazigh culture, Moroccan design and Yves Saint Laurent's career, many of which are not easily found elsewhere. The MYSLM café operates independently of the museum admission, meaning that non-museum visitors can also use the café — a useful option for those visiting Jardin Majorelle and seeking refreshment in a cool, architecturally distinguished space.