Riad · Medina
Heure Bleue Palais
A Relais & Châteaux in the heart of the medina — a courtyard, a rooftop pool, the sea two minutes away.
A fortified port of white and blue. Gnawa music, argan, grilled sardines, the trade winds. An afternoon's drive from Marrakech; a week's worth of slowness.
Essaouira — Mogador to the French — is where the Atlantic meets the Kingdom. A walled port built by Sultan Mohammed III, all white-and-blue, straight lines, salt in the stone. The light here is the same light that drew Jimi Hendrix, Orson Welles and half of the 1970s counter-culture.
The wind — the alizé — blows three hundred days a year. It is why the kitesurfers come, why the fishermen leave at five, and why the medina remains one of the last un-hurried places in the country.
We recommend Essaouira as a two-to-four-day interlude. A pause in the rhythm of a Moroccan stay.
A Relais & Châteaux in the heart of the medina — a courtyard, a rooftop pool, the sea two minutes away.
A modernist concrete villa thirty minutes south, on an empty beach. Chef, chauffeur, horses from the adjoining stables.
A golf resort on the coastal ridge — pool villas, thalassotherapy, direct access to the long beach.
A seventeenth-century sea-captain's house inside the ramparts, available for entire-property stays through the Maison.
A pre-dawn visit to the working port — the blue wooden trawlers returning, the auction on the dock, a breakfast of grilled sardines at a family stall closed to the public.
A ceremony of Gnawa musicians — the trance music of sub-Saharan Morocco — held privately for you in a riad courtyard, with the maalem and his qraqeb.
A morning ride south along the long beach of Sidi Kaouki — ten kilometres, no one, the ocean on your right. A picnic in an argan grove on the return.
A sailing yacht from the port, lunch on board — fresh urchins, grilled fish, Moroccan white — a slow return to the medina at sunset.
A short brief from the Maison on the season, the rhythm and the essentials. Bespoke advice upon enquiry.
Tell us the dates. We will answer within the hour, in the language of your choice.
