Riad Lamzia

The Riad Lamzia holds in a handful of rooms behind a medina door, in a derb of the Dabachi quarter, at the south-east corner of the old town. The quarter places the address three hundred metres from the Bahia palace and its gardens, a five-minute walk from Jemaa el-Fna, the souks starting at the corner of the street. You are in the middle of everything, within reach of the square’s terraces as of the covered lanes, without depending on a taxi to come home in the evening.

It has been taken up in a plain vein, far from the loaded decors expected here: lime tinted ochre pink, zellige floors, plaster arches and dining corner open onto the court. The rooms, a handful, open onto the patio or on the floors, each in its register - niche-set headboards, chased-metal wall lights, hand-rubbed tadelakt, private bathroom dressed in black-and-white zellige. A few travellers reproach the Wi-Fi for an uneven throughput. A plain room is set on the terrace, off the main staircase and without a cover overhead: practical for the price, less so on rainy or windy evenings.

The terrace, on the top level, unfolds an ochre-pink floor, sun loungers, a parasol and a basin raised a few steps, good to cool off at hot hours. This is a patio water point, not a pool where you swim, and the medina has other houses run in the same spirit found among the medina riads. Continental breakfast is taken here in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and a Moroccan restaurant serves dinner on site in the evening on booking. On the wellness side, the house offers hammam and massages on request, rounded out by the spa at the Riad RK, its sister house, a few steps away. Travellers give the address 9.0 on Booking on over eight hundred reviews, with a 9.8 mention for the staff and 9.7 for the location, which says where the stay plays.

That leaves who it fits. The first caveat has to do with inside calm: several travellers report thin partitions, which let sounds through from one room to another, and one of them noted a drain smell in the bathroom. The basin terrace is a real asset, but you have to take it for what it is, a cool point and not a lap basin. Access goes on foot through lanes sometimes crowded with carts and mopeds, there is no parking, and you go up by stairs, terrace included: big cases have to be hauled by hand. For a couple or two friends wanting a real medina house, a spot in the middle of the old town and a careful welcome from around £34 a night, this is a right address, and one of the cheapest of this calibre. For anyone travelling in a large family, expecting a lap pool or hotel services, better look at the big garden houses of the Palmeraie. Here, you pay first for a spot in the old town and a human scale.