Mandarin Oriental Marrakech

Mandarin Oriental Marrakech

Twenty minutes from the Jemaa el-Fnaa, in the Palmeraie's quiet sprawl of date palms and olive groves, the Mandarin Oriental Marrakech operates on a different timeline to the medina. The property unfolds across twenty hectares of rose gardens and orange trees, with paths that wind between low ochre walls and reflecting pools long enough to lose yourself in. Most guests stay in private villas, each with its own walled garden and heated pool, designed by Jean-Michel Gathy in a contemporary Moroccan idiom: zellige tiles, carved cedar, hand-troweled tadelakt walls, and unbroken sightlines from bed to bathtub to terrace. There are 54 villas and 9 suites in total, generous in scale, almost private-residence in feel. The spa stretches across nearly two thousand square metres and centres on a pair of hammams where the rituals run long and the oils smell of orange blossom and argan. Mes'Lalla serves Moroccan tasting menus by candlelight; Shirvan, the Akrame Benallal restaurant, runs a Silk Road menu that traces the route from Marrakech to the Levant. This is Marrakech for guests who want to come and go from the medina, not live inside it, who treat a hotel garden as the principal destination and the souks as a daytrip. Anyone seeking the riad-in-the-derbs experience, lantern-lit rooftops, calls to prayer through open shutters, will want to be somewhere else. The short version: A villa-led Mandarin in the Palmeraie, twenty minutes from the medina, set across twenty hectares of gardens with private pools, a vast hammam-led spa, and Moroccan-meets-Silk-Road dining. For guests who want Marrakech with quiet, space, and a heated pool of their own