Highlights
- Three bedrooms, each with bathroom
- Planted courtyard with orange trees
- Water channel and central basin
- Two roof terraces, one shaded
- Top-floor bedroom with private sitting area
Green, not decorated
The courtyard here was planted rather than styled. Four orange trees stand in open ground, a fig leans against the north wall, and jasmine has been allowed to take the columns, so by May the whole house smells of it after dark. A narrow channel carries water across the tiles to a basin at the centre. That sound is the reason the courtyard feels cooler than it measures.
Three bedrooms, six people
Two bedrooms open onto the gallery and the third has the top floor to itself, with its own small sitting area outside the door. Each has a bathroom. Six guests is the sensible limit, and the house is built around that number rather than stretched to reach it.
Two terraces, used differently
The lower terrace is shaded through the middle of the day and holds a table for six, so lunch tends to happen there. The upper one is open to the sky and gets the last of the light, which makes it an evening place — the call to prayer from the quarter arrives from three directions at once up there, and most people stop talking for it. Breakfast is usually served on whichever terrace the sun has not yet reached.
Amenities
- Planted courtyard with water basin
- Two roof terraces
- Fireplaces in the bedrooms
- Air conditioning and winter heating
- Breakfast normally prepared in the house
- Wi-Fi throughout
Ideal for
Available on request
- Airport transfers
- Dinner cooked at the riad
- Hammam booked in the quarter
- Flowers and terrace dressing
- Car and driver by the day
Charged separately from the stay and confirmed case by case.
Gallery
The area
South of the main square, the streets around the tombs run wider and straighter than the souk lanes, and they carry ordinary life rather than shopping: bread ovens, a tiled fountain, boys playing football against the ramparts at six. Walking north brings Jemaa el-Fna in fifteen minutes or so; the other direction ends at the walls and the gate, with gardens beyond them. Drivers will come this far south without argument, which is not true everywhere in the Medina.
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
Is three bedrooms really enough for six people?
Yes, and deliberately so. Each of the three bedrooms is a double with its own bathroom, so six is the honest capacity rather than a number reached by putting a sofa bed in a sitting room. Two of the rooms can usually be made up as twins.
Is there a pool?
There is water rather than swimming — a channel across the courtyard and a basin at its centre. Houses of this size in the quarter rarely have room for both a planted courtyard and a pool, and this one chose the garden. If swimming matters, a different house in the same quarter is the better answer.
What are the terraces like in winter?
Usable, though differently. The lower terrace is sheltered and holds warmth into the afternoon, which makes it the better lunch spot from November onwards. Braziers are normally brought up in the evening. Nights in Marrakech are colder than visitors expect, and the bedrooms typically have fireplaces for that reason.
Does a planted courtyard mean insects?
Some, in the way any garden does. The water moves rather than standing, which keeps mosquitoes down, and screens on the bedroom windows are normal in houses like this. Late spring evenings, when the jasmine is at its strongest, are the ones to expect company.
Request this stay
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. A person reads it and answers.