Highlights
- Three bedrooms in a six-bedroom shell
- Water channel down the courtyard
- Tadelakt bathrooms, no tile joints
- Sand lime plaster from door to roof
- Original stone columns and thresholds
The scale
The shell was built for twice as many bedrooms and holds three, so everything in it is a size larger than it needs to be. Ground-floor rooms run long. The courtyard is wide by medina standards, wide enough that the olive tree at one end does not crowd the seating at the other, and the stair takes two people abreast without either turning sideways. It takes six, and none of the three bedrooms is a small room.
Water and stone
A narrow channel runs the length of the courtyard, fed slowly enough to be heard rather than seen from the rooms around it. Much of the stonework was kept: column bases, a threshold worn hollow in the middle, a basin cut from one block by the kitchen door. Walls and ceilings carry the same sand-coloured lime plaster, which is what keeps the stone from reading as a museum piece.
Practical notes
Bathrooms are tadelakt, warm to the touch and without a tile joint anywhere. The kitchen opens onto the courtyard rather than sitting shut away, so a cook working there is part of the room. Upstairs, the roof has mattresses and shade and no dining table, which keeps the evening meal downstairs.
Amenities
- Underfloor heating on the ground floor
- Air conditioning in the bedrooms
- Tadelakt bathrooms with rain showers
- Kitchen open to the courtyard
- Roof terrace with mattresses and shade
- Wi-Fi throughout
Ideal for
Available on request
- Cook for breakfast and dinner
- In-riad massage
- Private transfers
- Studio and gallery visits
- Cookery lesson in the kitchen
Charged separately from the stay and confirmed case by case.
Gallery
The area
Mouassine is one of the older quarters and a compact one, and it takes a day to learn: lanes that bend, a few that stop dead, and doors that give no sign of what is behind them. The lanes here are too narrow for a car, so the last stretch is normally done on foot with a porter and a barrow. From the door, most of the medina is a quarter of an hour's walk or less.
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
Does a minimal riad feel cold or unwelcoming?
Warm materials do most of the work. Lime plaster and tadelakt hold heat and soften light, and the palette is sand rather than white. What is missing is ornament, not comfort: the beds, the linen and the seating are the parts nobody stripped back.
Are three bedrooms enough for six people?
Six is the sensible number rather than a squeeze. Each of the three bedrooms is a double with its own bathroom, and nothing in the count depends on sofa beds or extra mattresses. Even with six, the house does not feel full.
What is tadelakt?
Polished lime plaster, burnished with a stone and sealed with soap, which lets it take water without a single tile joint. It is warm to the hand, faintly uneven, and it marks a little over the years. Bathrooms here are finished in it; the floors carry the same lime plaster as the walls.
Can meals be taken at the riad?
Usually, yes. The kitchen opens onto the courtyard and a cook can normally be arranged for breakfast and dinner, with the shopping done that morning. There is no table on the roof, so evening meals happen in the courtyard or the salon.
Request this stay
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. A person reads it and answers.