Es Saadi Marrakech - Palace

The Es Saadi is one of the older great houses of Hivernage, and the Palace is its top tier. This is not a hotel in the usual sense but a city resort: an eight-hectare park, planted and mature, where suites, villas and ksars sit around an outdoor pool that ranks among the largest in the neighbourhood. The scale changes the whole stay: you move, you find shade and space, you go from the pool to the garden without ever feeling cramped, which stays rare this close to the medina.

What strikes next is how dense the facilities are. The spa, three thousand square metres, houses a Dior Institute, which sets it apart in town. Three restaurants cover Moroccan cooking and other registers, and the same estate gathers a casino and the Théâtro, one of the best-known clubs in Marrakech. Few addresses offer the treatments, the table and the nightlife on one plot. The suites and lodgings, in tadelakt and carved wood, play a classical elegance rather than contemporary design.

The address has its trade-offs, worth knowing. It is a large, animated estate, with the foot traffic, noise and nightlife that come with a casino and a club: this is far from the intimacy of a riad or small guesthouse. The Palace aims high, with rates to match, meaningfully above a neighbourhood hotel. And in spite of the proximity to the medina, you stay in Hivernage, on the hotel side, not in the old town.

The Es Saadi Palace is chosen for the scale and the variety: a park, a very large pool, a Dior spa, a table and a nightlife, gathered on one estate a step from the centre. It is not intimacy or absolute quiet you come here for, but space and facilities few houses can match. For a stay where the hotel is part of the trip as much as the city is, it is a class apart in Hivernage.