8 places, from £69 to £659 a night.
Clinging to an Atlas spur above Asni, an hour's drive from Marrakech, the Kasbah Tamadot is Sir Richard Branson's Moroccan house, bought after a hot-air balloon flight and opened to the public in 2005. Twenty-eight rooms and suites, four Berber tents on the hillside, two heated pools, a spa: you come for the mountain, not for the medina.
About fifteen kilometres from Marrakech, on the Fès road, Bakkal Farm is an organic farm you inhabit rather than a hotel. Seven waxed-concrete rooms with large picture windows onto the olive grove, a long mirror pool, a table drawn from the kitchen garden: you come here for the country and the calm, not for the medina, left a half-hour drive away.
A peacock perched on the thatched roof of the pool bar, white sun loungers by a green-water basin, olive trees everywhere: six kilometres out on the Ourika road, La Ferme El Dar is the best-rated of every address on this road, and the closest to the city. You sleep in a patio room or under a tent.
In the Palmeraie, Dar Sabra is less a hotel than an open-air art gallery you sleep in. Two hectares of olive trees planted with sculptures and pop frescoes, around twenty all-different rooms, three pools: you come here for the decor as much as for the rest, ten minutes from the medina but off its buzz.
About thirty kilometres from Marrakech, set in the Agafay desert, La Pause is an ecolodge deliberately off the grid: no electricity, no Wi-Fi, pisé lodges and tents lit by candle, two pools facing the stony hills. You come here for the silence and the sky, not for city-hotel comforts.
Above Imlil, in the Tamatert hamlet, Douar Samra is a pisé house clinging to the valley side at 1,800 metres facing the Toubkal massif. Seven rooms, including the main house lit by candles and two cabins perched on stilts in the trees: you come here for the mountain, the silence and a night out of the ordinary, an hour and a half by road from Marrakech.
An hour from Marrakech, hanging above the Azzaden valley, Kasbah Africa is an ecolodge turned to the mountain and the sky. Eight suites facing the summits, telescopes in the rooms, glass domes for sleeping under the stars: you come here for the High Atlas silence and the dark night, not to range out on the medina.
A long pool, wicker lanterns, the Atlas at the back: at km 10 of the Ourika road, The Source looks like a country house, and it was one. A family home turned hotel, with a recording studio at the far end of the garden. A few times a year, the estate turns into an electro stage until sunrise. The rest of the time, all you hear is the olive trees.
