Highlights
- Three bedrooms, six guests
- Rammed-earth walls around half a metre thick
- Old olive trees, gravel, no lawn
- Pool roughly twelve by four metres
- One long room for living and eating
Small on purpose
There are three bedrooms and one long living room, and that is most of the house. Walls are rammed earth, thick and left much as they came out of the shuttering, so the colour is the colour of the ground outside. Openings are small and deep, which keeps the sun out and holds the temperature steady well into the afternoon. Furniture is sparse and low, which sounds austere and reads, in practice, as restful.
The garden
Olives rather than palms dominate the plot, older trees kept low, with gravel and rosemary underneath instead of grass. A courtyard at the centre holds one tree and a stone bench, and picks up shade from mid-morning. The pool is roughly twelve metres by four: long enough for lengths, small enough to warm quickly in spring.
Who it suits
Six people is the ceiling, and six is already a crowd here. Two couples, or a family with grown children, tend to use it best. Anyone hoping for a bar, a games room or a house that entertains itself in the evening should look at something larger. Cooking is usually arranged for dinner and left otherwise to the guests, which is part of the appeal.
Amenities
- Private pool in a gravel terrace
- Central courtyard with a single olive tree
- Open kitchen giving onto the living room
- Air conditioning in the bedrooms and a wood fire
- Outdoor shower
- Wi-Fi
Ideal for
Available on request
- Cook for dinner only
- Yoga or massage in the courtyard
- A driver on the days you want one
- Hammam booked in town
- Walking guide for the grove
Charged separately from the stay and confirmed case by case.
Gallery
The area
This corner of the palm grove, north-east of the medina, sits behind its own wall, and little of the road reaches it. Sound carries oddly at night: a dog somewhere, the call to prayer, then nothing. What the area does not give is spontaneity — no walking out for coffee, no wandering into dinner. Everything is a drive, which suits a week planned around staying put and going out once.
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?
The three bedrooms each normally have their own bathroom, so six people are not queuing in the morning. What the house does not offer is a spare corner to disappear into. The living room is shared, and that is the trade for its size.
Is it too quiet?
For some people, yes. There is no bar, no games room and nothing within walking distance. It suits people who arrive with books and are content to leave the car unused for days at a time. Anyone who wants the city at hand is better off in the medina.
Can meals be arranged?
Usually, and in a house this size it tends to be dinner only. The kitchen gives straight onto the living room, so anyone working there through the day is working in the middle of everyone. Breakfast is often left set out rather than served.
When is the best time to stay?
Spring and autumn are the straightforward answer: warm days, cool nights, and a pool this size warms through quickly. Winter is good for the light and the quiet, though the evenings want a fire. July and August are hot enough to reorganise the day around, though the walls hold their cool until mid-afternoon.
Request this stay
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. A person reads it and answers.