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An easy side trip from Marrakech, travel writer and photographer Steve Davey gets the chance to satisfy his inner Roman on a visit to the Atlas Film Studios near Ouarzazate in Morocco.

We have all heard of Spaghetti Westerns, but how many of us have heard of Tagine Thrillers, or even Couscous Cinema? Yet the Atlas Studios (or Atlas Corporation Studios to give them their full name) where many blockbuster movies have been filmed, are a stones throw from the real Atlas Mountains, just outside of the town of Ouarzazate in Morocco. I’d noticed the Atlas credit on films in the past, but for some reason had never really connected this to Morocco. 

The studios were established in 1983 and cover some 650 hectares of mainly dry scrub, making them Morocco’s, and one of the world's biggest film studios (only Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, India, is bigger). This is no sterile or camped up movie studio theme park. This is the chance to take a guided tour around actual film sets which have been left to crumble in an atmospheric state of disrepair.

In the parking lot stands a very fake looking jet fighter which was apparently used as a prop in Jewel of the Nile (1985). It looks better in the film, or so my guide tells me. 

We move on to a large, somewhat less decrepit forum which was recycled from an earlier film and used in a recent TV mini-series, and then pass through a number of small sets, including a Mexican-style dwelling and a Roman aqueduct. 

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