Riad Louhou

The Riad Louhou made a sharp aesthetic choice, and that is what sets it apart in the Kasbah: white rather than colour, stripping-back rather than overload. The patio is pristine, punctuated with mashrabiya and a few palm trees, and the whole plays natural materials, driftwood, rattan, Berber weavings, linen. You are far from the traditional riad saturated with zellige, in something more contemporary and more restful, which stays rare at this price bracket in the medina.

It is also a very small house, and it comes through in the service. Five rooms only, all suites, one on the patio level and four on the floor, which places the address in the intimate rather than the hotel. The house is set up for you to spend time here: a hammam and treatments on request, an à la carte restaurant at midday and in the evening, an included careful breakfast, and on the roof a basin to cool off under a wide palm-leaf shade, with the view over the Kasbah terraces. The welcome and cleanliness are the points travellers place highest.

Two limits, worth knowing before booking, have to do with the size and nature of the house. The roof basin is small, with few sun loungers, which travellers flag in summer when everyone wants to use it at once. And the house, entirely set around stairs, offers no access for reduced-mobility guests, which the house itself notes: to rule out straightaway if it is a criterion. The price, finally, sits above the small riads of the quarter, in the range of a careful address.

The Riad Louhou is one of the most elegant addresses in the Kasbah at this scale: white, calm, with a hammam and a table, ten minutes from the square. You just have to accept what comes with a small house of character - no real pool, no ground-floor level, a price above the neighbouring riads.