Highlights
- Four bedrooms, four bathrooms, sleeps eight
- Hand-cut zellige throughout the courtyard
- Ground-floor workshop room with long table
- Reed-shaded roof terrace
- Minutes on foot from the medina's old palaces
The house
Four bedrooms over two floors, arranged around a courtyard roughly six metres by five, with a fountain basin set into the floor rather than raised. The tile is hand-cut zellige, so the lines run slightly irregular where the pieces meet, which is the point. Walls are lime plaster, polished in some rooms and left matt in others. Bedrooms take one corner of the plan each, which keeps doors from facing each other and makes the house quieter than the room count suggests. Two sit at courtyard level; the other two are up the stairs. Each bedroom has its own bathroom, which is what makes a house of eight work in the morning.
Living and working
The ground floor keeps a room that was once a storeroom and now holds a long table under a north window. People use it for laying out purchases from the souk, for drawing, or simply for eating away from the courtyard. Textiles through the house are woven rather than printed, so they wear rather than fade.
The roof
Reed matting on a timber frame gives shade for most of the day. It looks over the low rooftops of the quarter, towards the Atlas on clear mornings. Evenings up here are usually the coolest part of the house.
Amenities
- Hand-plastered hammam room off the ground-floor corridor
- Air conditioning and wool blankets in all four bedrooms
- Wi-Fi normally reaches both floors and the roof
- Workshop room with a long table and task lighting
- Reed matting and low seating on the roof terrace
- Breakfast normally made in the house rather than brought in, as it usually is in a riad of this size
Ideal for
Available on request
- Airport transfers on arrival and departure
- A cook for evening meals
- Half-day visits to working craft workshops
- Hammam and massage arranged at the house
- Drivers for day trips towards the Atlas foothills
Charged separately from the stay and confirmed case by case.
Gallery
The area
The Mellah is the old Jewish quarter, in the south-east of the medina, with spice and jewellery markets on its edge. Houses are tall and narrow, with wooden balconies overhanging lanes that stay in shade. It is a working part of town rather than a polished one: mopeds, deliveries, early noise. The old palaces at the southern edge of the medina are a few minutes on foot. Taxis reach the edge of the quarter; the last stretch is walked.
What the photos won't tell you
Every listing in the world photographs the pool from its best corner, and no photograph answers the questions that decide a stay. So before you commit, we put the following in writing for your dates:
- How far the car gets, and how many metres and steps remain with the luggage.
- Who the neighbours are, and what you will hear at five in the morning.
- Whether the pool is heated, and in which months that decides whether you swim.
- What “staffed” covers — who is there, at what hours, and who cooks.
- Where the wifi actually reaches, not just where the router is.
- Which of the property’s own photographs were taken with a wide-angle lens, and what a room looks like from the doorway.
Common questions
How close can a taxi get to the door?
Taxis stop at the nearest gate or square, and the last two or three minutes are on foot down a lane. Luggage is normally met and carried in. Someone will usually walk you in the first time so the turns make sense afterwards.
Does the house work for children?
The fountain basin sits flush with the courtyard floor and the stairs are steep and tiled, which is usual in a house of this age. Families with school-age children manage easily. With toddlers, the stairs and the roof edge need thinking about first.
Are all four bedrooms equal, or is one clearly the short straw?
All four are doubles with their own bathrooms, though they differ. The two at courtyard level stay cool and hold the shade; the upper pair take more light and more of the street. Eight people spread across them evenly.
What is the workshop room actually used for?
It is a plain room with a long table, north light and power along the table edge. There is no soft seating in it, which is deliberate: it stays a room for doing things in rather than a second sitting room.
Request this stay
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. A person reads it and answers.