Hotel Sahrai

Hotel Sahrai

Hotel Sahrai stands on the former site of Marshal Lyautey's summer palace, with views over the largest medina in the Arab world and a panoramic infinity pool, taking in twelve centuries of the city's history in one sweep. French designer Christophe Pillet rebuilt the site around the same great arches that once framed the palace's façade, working zellige pools, carved plaster and Fassi ceramics into a bespoke interior, down to a furniture line he now produces with Living Divani. The hotel calls itself an alternative to the shady isolation of the medina's riads and the impersonal scale of the resorts beyond the walls, built instead on what it describes as a human scale. Fifty rooms sit across four floors, and even the entry Deluxe category runs 323 square feet, with marble bathrooms, floor-to-ceiling windows and a Nespresso machine. Two restaurants carry the food: Amaraz for Moroccan cuisine with a live oud player, Medusa for wood-fired Italian, and a rooftop lounge bar for wine by the fireplace after. The spa runs a Cinq Mondes menu with a traditional hammam and a Technogym gym, and the concierge arranges tee times at Royal Golf de Fès or a morning of Arabic calligraphy with a master. This suits people weighing a stay inside the medina against one close to it, who want space without losing the view, and who should know that unmarried couples need a marriage certificate to share a room here. It won't suit anyone chasing nightlife beyond the on-site club, or a discount rate, given the extra bed and pet fees stacked on top. Small Luxury Hotels of the World membership confirms what the arches already argue. Hotel Sahrai sits on the site of Marshal Lyautey's old summer palace, its infinity pool framing the largest medina in the Arab world through Christophe Pillet's reworked arches. It suits travellers who want Fes at human scale, not shrunk into a riad or inflated into a resort.