Dar d'Art

Dar d’Art holds in five rooms behind a medina door, in a derb of Bab Doukkala, at the north-west corner of the old town. Bab Doukkala, long residential, is set around its mosque and stays off the pressure of the souks, while keeping everything to hand: a quarter of an hour on foot to Jemaa el-Fna, eight minutes to Le Jardin Secret, a little more to reach the Jardin Majorelle on the other side of the ramparts.

The house was rebuilt by its owners around the patio, and that is where it stands out: Dar d’Art doubles as an exhibition space. Contemporary canvases and drawings, signed by young artists welcomed in turn, dress the sitting-room walls - urban art, abstract painting, the decor changes with the hangings. So you step into a house that is not fixed in the expected register of a zellige-loaded riad. Here, pale lime, tadelakt, taut-thread chairs and large canvases on the wall. The five rooms, including a family suite for six people, open onto the patio or on the floors, each in its register - coloured headboard, cedar shutters, private bathroom. Central heating takes over in winter.

The stay then plays on the water and on the roof, and that is where Dar d’Art stands out among houses of this size. On the ground floor, a pool runs along the sitting room, sheltered from the sun: not a patio basin where you dip your feet but a real indoor pool where you actually swim. On the terrace, a second water point under parasol, sun loungers and an open-air sitting room facing the crenellated ramparts and the medina rooftops, where you take breakfast and go back up at sundown. You close the day at the hammam, with scrub or massage on site. Travellers give the house 9.3 on Booking on more than seventeen hundred reviews, with a 9.8 mention for the staff, which says where the stay first plays. For anyone after the same register, the quarter has no shortage of addresses run in this spirit: see the old-town houses that keep a real swim.

That leaves who it fits. The first caveat has to do with the water: the indoor pool is pleasant but stays a swim point, not a lap basin, and the terrace water point is closed by a glass roof part of the year. Access goes on foot through lanes sometimes crowded with carts and mopeds, there is no parking, and you go up by stairs from one floor to the next. The artistic stance, finally, will not please anyone expecting the traditional decor of a riad: here, the contemporary canvases are owned more than painted cedar ceilings. For a couple, two friends or a family wanting a calm medina house, a real sheltered pool, a hammam and a setting out of the ordinary from around £78 a night, the address lands right and is well placed. For anyone travelling in a large group or expecting the services and the lap pool of a hotel, better look at the big garden houses of the Palmeraie. Here, you pay first for a spot in the old town and a house that lives as a gallery.