Les Jardins de la Médina

Les Jardins de la Médina lives up to its name, and that is its lead idea. Where the old town lays out in tight patios, the house opens, behind an unmarked Kasbah wall, a three-thousand-square-metre garden, planted with orange trees, palms and bougainvillea, with a heated pool at its centre. You pass a plain door in the south of the medina and you find yourself in a park, with the space and calm of a country villa, steps from the great monuments. It is a former palace, redone as a thirty-six-room hotel, that has kept its heritage setting while equipping itself as a standing address.

The house is built so that you take your time, and not only for the pool. A spa with hammam and sauna takes part of the estate, several tables cover meals, and the kitchen, served in the garden, turns up often among the strong points in the comments, along with the calm of the place. It is listed by the Michelin Guide for lodging, which sets the aimed level: that of a careful house, still reasonably scaled despite its thirty-six rooms, where the garden makes the difference.

The location plays both sides, with the usual Kasbah caveat. You are in the middle of the southern medina, minutes on foot from the Saadian Tombs and the El Badi palace, which puts the great monuments within walking reach. But access is through a derb, where the car does not go to the door: you drop nearby and finish on foot, bags carried. It is the trade-off of a quiet address, set back from the traffic, and not on an avenue.

The bet of Les Jardins de la Médina is holding together two things the old town usually keeps apart: the space of a large garden, with pool and spa, and an address inside the ramparts, close to the monuments. You need to accept a thirty-six-room house rather than an intimate riad, and a last on-foot leg through the derb. For a medina stay without the shut-in feel, few addresses stand the comparison.