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Riad JabadorMarrakech
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The shaded end of the terrace: a dining corner under hanging greenery and woven wicker pendants, along an olive-green banquette.

The house

Inward

A riad is a house built around a courtyard. Nothing faces the street: every room opens onto the courtyard, and all the light comes down from the roof.

The plan

A plan several centuries old, and still the right one in the heat

The walls are thick, the openings rare on the street side and generous on the courtyard side. Hot air rises and escapes through the well; the water in the pool and the shade of the banana plants bring the temperature down several degrees with nothing running.

None of this was invented for modern comfort. It is simply how people built here, when the climate decided the architecture.

The terrace at the blue hour: the sky still dark above the whitewashed walls, the wall lights on, the courtyard open below.
The riad courtyard: a pool edged in green zellige, banana plants, a hand-painted arabesque ceiling and pierced brass lanterns.

01

The courtyard

The pool sits at the centre, edged in green zellige laid in a chevron. Banana plants climb towards the opening in the roof, and pierced lanterns hang beneath a hand-painted ceiling.

It is the coolest room in the house, and the one everyone ends up coming back to.

The sitting room: low olive-green banquettes, white cotton curtains tied back with red tassels, and green arabesques painted by hand across the ceiling.

02

The sitting room

Low banquettes all the way round, white cotton curtains held back with red tassels, a rug laid over the zellige.

The ceiling is painted with green arabesques you only notice once you are sitting down with your head back.

Woven daybeds with green cushions and straw hats left on them, lined up in the shade of the parasols.

03

The terrace

Blue and white cement tiles, straw parasols, woven daybeds along the whitewashed wall. One end stays shaded under the greenery, with the tables laid and wicker pendants overhead.

This is where breakfast happens, and where the day ends, once the wall lights come on.

The address

In the medina, not beside it

The house is at Bab Aylan Derb Jemaa 316, in the Bab Aylan quarter, on the eastern side of the medina. Jemaa el-Fna is 850 m away.

You arrive through the derbs, on foot. That is the price of being properly inside the city rather than on its edge — and it is also why the silence of the courtyard is such a surprise.

The sitting room: low olive-green banquettes, white cotton curtains tied back with red tassels, and green arabesques painted by hand across the ceiling.

Come and stay

The house is booked online. For a question before you book, the telephone is still the most direct.