Riad Clementine

The Riad Clementine holds in eight rooms behind a medina door, in a derb of Bab Doukkala, about a hundred metres inside the ramparts. Bab Doukkala is a lively working-class quarter of the north-west old town, off the most touristy souks but within reach of everything: about fifteen minutes on foot to Jemaa el-Fna, a little more to the Jardin Majorelle, on the edge of Gueliz. You are in the working medina, carts and workshops, and you come home in the evening in a quiet derb.

The dwelling, which the house dates to the 18th century, has kept its court planted with orange trees in the ground, its arched galleries on two levels and its mashrabiya windows. Here is the decision that sets the address apart: rather than dig a basin in the patio and sacrifice the court, the house set its pool a floor up, on a terrace. The patio stays a real cool court, where breakfast is taken under the trees and where you retreat at hot hours. The eight rooms are spread around and on the floors, each in a plain Moroccan register - tadelakt and lime, pise corner fireplaces, daybed and cushions, brick-vaulted bathrooms with double washbasin and bathtub.

On the first level, the pool: a real basin heated and held at temperature year-round, big enough to do a few lengths and ringed with sun loungers and parasols. Enough to swim, and not just cool off, which stays rare for a medina riad. Higher up, a sundeck-terrace unfolds more loungers and the view over the rooftops and the minarets. The Swiss owner runs the house on site, and you read it in the welcome as at table: generous breakfast, continental, vegetarian or gluten-free on request, and a table d’hôtes in the evening on booking. Travellers give the house 9.4 on Booking, with a 9.1 mention for couples’ stays, which says the address’s profile. For anyone after the same criterion, the quarter has no shortage of houses that moved their basin to the heights: see those that let you swim on their terraces.

That leaves who it fits. The first caveat is not the pool, for once, but what surrounds it: the house has no hammam or spa, where most riads at this level offer scrub and massage on site. You have to go out for that. The pool, set on the terrace, is off the rooms and the patio, and you go up by stairs, no lift: big cases have to be hauled by hand. Access goes on foot through lanes sometimes crowded, and Bab Doukkala, lively by day, takes knowing your way in the evening. For a couple or two friends wanting a real medina house, calm and most of all a heated pool where you actually swim from around £94 a night, the address lands right and is well kept. For anyone expecting a full spa, hotel services with a lift or a pool at the foot of the rooms, better look at the big garden houses of the Palmeraie. Here, you pay first for a preserved old court and a rare swim in the middle of the old town.