The collection
Marrakech-Safi · The Red City below the High Atlas
Eat what the city is known for. Tanjia marrakshia is beef slow-cooked with spices in a ceramic pot set in the hot ashes of a traditional oven, and Mechoui Alley sells lamb roasted slowly. Tea is green, with mint and sugar, poured from the curved spout of the pot into small glasses. Then leave the lanes for the gardens: the Menara to the west, laid out in 1157 around a large reservoir among olive groves, and the Agdal to the south, 340 hectares inside its own walls.
Marrakech takes its colour from its walls. Ali ibn Yusuf built them in 1122 and 1123, and with the red sandstone buildings that followed they gave the city its nickname, the Red City. Abu Bakr ibn Umar had founded it around 1070 as the capital of the Almoravids. It sits on the north side of the High Atlas, whose highest peak, Toubkal, rises to 4,167 metres. Inside the walls is the medina, a town of lanes, souks and riads, the old houses built around a garden courtyard, and at night the Koutoubia's minaret is floodlit above it.
The square changes with the hour. By day it belongs to orange-juice stalls, water sellers with leather water-bags and brass cups, and snake charmers. Late in the day the storytellers, musicians and magicians arrive, and as darkness falls dozens of food stalls open at once and the square is at its fullest. Café terraces stand along its sides, and UNESCO has recognised it as Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2001.
Its name means the booksellers' mosque, for the book shops that once stood in the street on its east side. The minaret is 77 metres of sandstone, probably finished by about 1195, with a band of white and green tiles near the top and copper globes on the spire. The Giralda in Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat were built on the same pattern. The mosque is still in use and closed to non-Muslims, and a rose garden lies to its west and south.
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Medina
A 1923 palace inside the ramparts of Marrakech, in the orchard a sultan gave his son as a wedding gift, with the Koutoubia minaret in view.
Begun in the 1860s by the grand vizier Si Musa and enlarged by his son between 1894 and 1900, it holds about 150 rooms around courtyards and garden riads. The Grand Courtyard is 50 by 30 metres of Carrara marble, and the ceilings are cedar from the Middle Atlas, painted with flowers. The Grand Riad is still planted with trees from the 19th century.
Built for the Saadian sultans between 1591 and 1598, sealed off by Moulay Isma'il in the late 17th century, and rediscovered in 1917. In the Chamber of the Twelve Columns, Ahmad al-Mansur lies under a carved cedar ceiling, among 12 columns of Carrara marble. The necropolis holds 56 graves under carved marble epitaphs, and about 100 more in the garden marked only with coloured tile.
Jacques Majorelle began the garden in 1923 and worked on it for almost 40 years. The cobalt blue on its walls and buildings, inspired by the city's tiles, is named Majorelle Blue after him. Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé restored it in the 1980s, and Saint Laurent's ashes were scattered here in 2008. The garden has cacti, bamboo and many fountains. The villa now holds the Berber Museum, and the Yves Saint Laurent Museum opened nearby in 2017.
The wall runs some 19 kilometres around the medina and stands up to 5.8 metres high, with 20 gates and 200 towers along it. The Almoravids built it in the 12th century from orange-red clay and chalk.
The Medina, 5 minutes' walk from Jemaa el-Fnaa
A medina of its own inside the old city walls, with 53 riads behind their own doors and a pool in every one.
A short list of extraordinary places to stay.
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