Highlights
- Four bedrooms, eight guests
- Zellige courtyard with central fountain
- Bejmat floors throughout
- Hand-painted cedar doors and shutters
- Wood fire in the salon
The plan
Four rooms around a courtyard, a salon on one side, a roof above: the arrangement is the standard one, and it works because it is old. The floors are bejmat, small terracotta bricks laid by hand, which are cool in summer and never quite level. Zellige runs up the courtyard walls in the usual green and white. Doors and shutters are painted cedar, done in the geometric style that takes a painter weeks and fades pleasantly rather than peeling.
Who it suits
Eight is the number here, in four bedrooms, and none of them is huge. Windows are small, so the good light arrives from the middle of the house rather than off the street. Two rooms open straight onto the courtyard gallery; the other two are a half-flight up and a little more private. In winter the salon has a working fireplace and the courtyard gets cold by four in the afternoon, which is worth knowing. Summer works the other way round, and the house holds its cool into the evening. The roof is a low, cushioned place for mint tea rather than a dining terrace.
Amenities
- Air conditioning and heating in the bedrooms
- Working fireplace in the salon
- Fountain courtyard planted with orange trees
- Roof terrace with low seating and shade
- Small hammam on the ground floor
- Wi-Fi throughout
Ideal for
Available on request
- Cook and daily market shopping
- Hammam and massage in-house
- Souk walk with a guide
- Airport transfer with porter
- Atlas day trip with driver
Charged separately from the stay and confirmed case by case.
Gallery
The area
Mouassine is a working quarter of the medina, north of Jemaa el-Fna and about ten minutes' walk from it. What is worth knowing is the evening. Shutters come down in stages from about seven, and by nine the lanes are quiet enough that the loudest thing is usually a cat or a scooter two streets away. Mornings start early again, and the quarter is loud by eight.
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 a traditional riad comfortable in high summer?
That is what the plan is for. Thick walls, small windows and a shaded courtyard keep the ground floor cool through the afternoon, and bedrooms in houses of this kind normally have air conditioning for the nights when the temperature does not drop.
What is bejmat, and does it matter?
Small terracotta floor bricks, laid by hand and sealed rather than glazed. They stay cool underfoot, they take a slight unevenness that machine-cut tiles never quite manage, and they deepen in colour with age. Most older houses in this quarter have them.
Where do eight people eat together?
Eight is the house number and the table is sized for it, either in the salon or in the courtyard depending on the month. A cook can usually be arranged, and shopping in the souk for the day's food is normally part of that.
Are there a lot of stairs?
Yes, and no lift — riads are vertical houses. Two bedrooms sit on the courtyard level, two are a half-flight above, and the roof is another flight up. The staircase is the original, so treads are narrow and worth taking slowly.
Request this stay
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. A person reads it and answers.