Morocco’s newest jewel, the luxurious Almaha Marrakech

An oasis of tranquillity in merry Marrakech

Navigating the winding alleys and narrow pathways of Marrakech in Morocco can be unnervingly rewarding. Take a left at an intersection and be greeted with a rowdy café of locals jabbering over coffee under drying herbs and caged birds. Take a right, and you might end up in Jemaa el Fna, the massive square that is the epicentre of the city, full of troubadours, touts and taverns offering fresh orange juice and Moroccan snacks. Go straight and you might end up in a quiet street with a vast, intricate wooden door beckoning.

The door might led to Almaha Marrakech, a boutique design hotel launched in February 2016. Designed by Belgian architect and designer Charles Kaisin, the Almaha Marrakech is a jewel. Inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poem ‘L’invitation au voyage’, it attempts to recreate the magic and mystique of the Red City in the serenity of a luxury riad. Located in the Kasbah, Marrakech’s oldest neighbourhood near the Royal Palace, the riad hotel has only 12 individual bedroom suites, each of which recreates the plush environment once enjoyed by Moroccan kings.

Elsewhere in the riad, Moroccan culture is embraced. In the Pixel Room, a tableau of silk fabric tiles refashion the chaos of Jemaa el Fna is the cosiest of settings. In The Library, a vast collection of 1083 books celebrating French and Morrocan literature are on display, nodding to the French colonial ties in Morocco. Then there is the Hammam, which uses traditional mosaic patterned tiles in the zellige style cast in a repetitive geometric pattern that eases the consciousness into submitting to relaxation.

Finally, there is the beautiful central courtyard, where sweeping curves cast Arabic domed shapes all around a central pool that sparkles in the sun in the day, and reflects a kaleidoscope of lights at night. Outside Marrakech may be bustling and humming with the energy of ten thousand camels, and while you should venture and plug into that matrix, the Almaha Marrakech is a perfect little oasis of calm right in the midst of all that buzz.

Almaha Marrakech