In Marrakesh there is no more exotic place to stay than a private riad. Lisa Grainger selects ten you wouldn’t want to leave. All prices quoted are to rent an entire riad, per night, including airport transfers and breakfast.
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Ezzahra
Best for a special celebration
The ultimate luxury bolt-hole in Marrakesh. This private house, built in 2003 as a family holiday home for Gibraltarian Brian Callaghan, oozes the owner’s love of life and style. Located in the most exclusive part of the Palmeraie – the palm grove fringing the city into which the suburbs are gradually spreading – and with a Saudi Arabian prince next door, this Italian-designed kasbah is as indulgent as it gets in Morocco. As well as seven big ensuite bedrooms, each with its own veranda, there is a games room, two screening rooms, enormous covered living-spaces hung with art, and, joy of joys, a spa and hammam staffed by three full-time therapists. The food is light and scrumptious: thick grapefruit juice and date-and-pistachio yogurt for breakfast; salads and seafood for lunch; a Moroccan feast for dinner. The large bathrooms are equipped with handmade soaps scented with orange peel and locally-sourced organic argan oil to feed parched skin. And did I mention the Berber tent in the gardens, decorated with exotic cushions for lolling about on hot afternoons? Or that the exceptionally efficient manager, Maria, can arrange for camels to visit for rides around the garden, or for dancers to entertain? The absolute biz – and a bargain, given that the prices include full board and beauty treatments.
Riad Ezzahra, Marrakesh (00212 661 221 714, www.ezzahramorocco.com ). From £3,014 for up to 14, including all meals and beauty treatments as well as shopping excursions, through Cazenove & Loyd (020 7384 2332, www.cazloyd.com).
Riad Farnatchi
Best for experiencing medina life
When British hotelier Jonathan Wix – owner of The Scotsman in Edinburgh and 42 The Calls in Leeds – discovered Riad Farnatchi, it consisted of five houses, some of whose walls dated back to the 17th century. Over two years, he slowly created a nine-suite home in the heart of one of the oldest districts in the medina. Its USP? Its understated modern-Moroccan aesthetic: vast black-and-white rooms with dark, handmade wooden furniture. There are three courtyards, one within suite nine, one with a communal dip-pool, and one surrounded by nooks for retreating with a drink and book. A roof-terrace, swathed in bougainvillea and with shaded loungers and a shower, overlooks the makeshift roofs and minarets of the city. Experienced staff include knowledgeable manager Lynn Perez, who will whip up a feast in the dining room or suggest top-notch outings. Bathrooms – some hewn from magnificent ammonite-rich black marble – have Philippe Starck fittings, underfloor heating (Marrakesh can get quite chilly in winter) and Molton Brown goodies. Art from all over the world adorns the walls. There is also a hammam, heated in the afternoons, when a local woman can be summoned to scrub. And scrub. And scrub.
Riad Farnatchi (00212 5 2438 4910, www.riadfarnatchi.com). From £2,518 for up to 18, through Cazenove & Loyd, as before.
Riad Madani
Best for opulent time-travel
Stepping through the battered wooden entrance of the Madani is like stepping back a couple of hundred years. This palace was once the home of Grand Vizier Madani El Glaoui, and the French/Brazilian couple who have lived here for 12 years clearly relish its heritage. This 15-room riad drips with history and opulent, bohemian style (it’s where Vogue crews often stay and Mario Testino frequently shoots). Rooms tiled with centuries-old mosaics contain Roman sculptures and antique pieces picked up from European flea markets. Tables hold collections of 60s glass, Lalique ashtrays, art books, and ornately enamelled objects. And on every wall hangs art, from two-metre high Chinese portraits (one of the owners was French ambassador to China) to original Julian Schnabels, Andy Warhol prints, African sketches and Berber oils. The star of it all is the building itself, its duplexes set around jungly courtyards, with winding corridors and passages, maroon-painted wooden ceilings adorned with intricate Moroccan artwork, wildly tiled bathrooms and brass-studded doors. The chef is a master at knocking up Berber feasts, and the riad has become a popular haunt, the handsome Brazilian co-owner told us, for big English celebrations. (Who are welcome, so long as guests are not like the English group who “drank and drank and drank – and then collapsed on loungers around the pool. Not so chic…”)
Riad Madani (00 212 5 2444 1884, www.riad-madani.com). From £2,709, for up to 30, through Koubba (020 7731 3525, www.koubba.com).
Bab Ourika
Best for space and simplicity
This simple desert kasbah was built from scratch in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, 45 minutes’ drive from Marrakesh, by British banker-turned-barrister-turned-builder Steven Skinner, who opened its doors last December. Set on a hilltop, the 15-bedroom, fortress-style kasbah has 360-degree views. On one side, canyons drop hundreds of feet, their iron-rich earthen walls turning from orange to purple at sunset. Ahead loom the Atlas Mountains, topped with snow in winter. And to the other side stretch the rich soils of the Ourika valley, luxuriant with ancient groves of olive and orange trees. Although the location is remote and the interiors may be too minimalist for some (cream walls, cream stone bathrooms, rustic woollen curtains and charming pom-pom-fringed woollen throws on the beds), the simplicity has advantages. The fresh mountain air encourages you to breathe. Tables beneath creeper-strewn awnings invite you to sit and let the views seep into your head. And loungers beside the lavender gardens beckon you to lie back and relax. The food is outstanding, with local specialities honed for European palates. And I was told the German masseuse has “healing hands”, and that the hiking, horseriding and kayaking guides are local and knowledgeable.
Bab Ourika, Ourika Valley (00 212 6 61 252 328, www.babourika.com ). From £2,379 for up to 30, through Koubba, as before.
Riad el Fenn
Best for an extravagant party
The richly-hued Rachel Riley painting hanging in the hallway and the pair of pink Converse trainers casually placed among the Moroccan slippers at the front door say it all. This 22-room riad is expensive, arty and lots of fun, as you’d expect from owner Vanessa Branson: founder of the Arts in Marrakesh festival in November, glamorous party-thrower and, yes, sister of Richard. In the Douiria suite you get a bath in the bedroom, a purple-swathed snug, and two storeys of Moroccan-furnished space. Room 19’s pinkish walls sparkle with tiny pieces of glass mosaic. Other rooms have Italian marble baths or walls of sleek tadelakt – the traditional polished lime- plaster coating of hammams. There are courtyards, verandas and roof-terraces to hang out in, two 12-metre, chlorine-free pools big enough for a proper swim, loungers embellished with embroidered sunhats, and a hammam and beauty rooms for treatments. The roof-terrace has views of the putting green (used for boules by the French), Koutoubia mosque and Atlas Mountains. The menu is Mediterranean. And the ground floor holds a cavernous dining room and bar, with a stage for those of theatrical bent or whose budget extends to hiring entertainers (a member of Pink Floyd was a recent performer). The funkiest riad in the medina.
Riad el Fenn (00 212 5 2444 1210, www.riadelfenn.com ). From £8,496 for up to 45, through Cazenove & Loyd, as before.
Dixneuf la Ksour
Best for good food and elegance
A real find, a few minutes from the main Jmaa el Fna square and right on the edge of the medina (which means taxis can get to you). The simple, elegant style of this predominantly white riad is calming after the multi-sensory overload of Marrakesh’s thronged medina. Sunlight streams into the six pale, airy bedrooms, illuminating dark pieces of handmade furniture designed by French interiors experts Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty (the names behind the celebrated L’Heure Bleue hotel in Essaouira). Bathrooms of polished cream tadelakt or masculine black marble are spacious and contemporary. For evenings, the riad has three cosy sitting areas: two with fireplaces, one with sumptuous leather-covered walls. As well as a rooftop terrace there is also a small courtyard pool – tiled in signature black, white, brown and latte mosaics. The chef, Ishan, French guests assured us, is “fantastique, très, très bon!”. And staff, including the efficient manager, Dominique Dupont, are all smiles and advice (which is not always the case in Marrakesh, as we discovered in the disappointing, cat-filled Riad Enija).
Riad Dixneuf la Ksour (00 212 5 2438 4132, www.dixneuf-la-ksour.com ). From £600 for groups of up to 12, bookable through Koubba, as beforeSee
Full list and found on The Telegraph!
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