TRAVELism Edition #35: The City Behind The Door, Marrakech

ism / ˈizəm / noun
a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement.

“Before Marrakech, everything was black. This city taught me colour.”

— Yves Saint Laurent

Welcome Back — Travelers,

This week, we’re leaving the cobblestones of Old Québec behind and crossing the Atlantic to Al Hamra, The Red One.

Marrakech does not arrive all at once.

It reveals itself by degrees, behind doors. A plain alley slips into a tiled courtyard. A market turn becomes a rooftop. A garden gate opens to cobalt blue, cactus green, and the hush of somewhere entirely its own. A riad becomes not just where you sleep, but the reason you came.

That is the spell of the city. From the street, Marrakech often keeps its best cards tucked close. The most memorable rooms, meals, pools, shops, and quiet corners are usually waiting behind something modest, weathered, or deliberately unassuming.

The move is not to conquer the medina. It is to let it unfold.

In Edition No. 35, we’re opening the right doors: our favorite base camp, the dinners worth planning around, the gardens that deserve their own afternoon, the spa-and-pool moments made for slowing down, and the rooftops that seem to rise out of nowhere just when the city starts to glow.

Next stop: Marrakech.

Cheers,

The TRAVELISM Crew ✈️

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Let’s go!

📍 Marrakech, Morroco: Founded in 1070 by the Almoravids, Marrakech grew as an Islamic imperial capital, shaped by Berber dynasties, scholars, mosques, madrasas, traders, and caravan routes. Faith moved through the city with architecture, law, daily ritual, and learning, turning The Red City into one of Morocco’s great Muslim cultural centers.

The Vibe
Marrakech is a city of hidden entrances and slow reveals. Terracotta walls, lantern-lit courtyards, spice-scented souks, tiled riads, palm shadows, rooftop sunsets, and Atlas Mountain light all working together in one beautiful bit of travel theater.

The Scene
The days move between medina wanderings, garden detours, hammam resets, rooftop lunches, and dinners tucked behind unmarked doors. It is stylish, sensory, and slightly surreal, where the best moments usually appear after one more turn.

🧭 Medina
The old city, and the beautiful maze where Marrakech does most of its storytelling. Expect narrow lanes, market turns, hidden courtyards, and the occasional “wait, weren’t we just here?” moment.

🌿 Riad
A traditional Moroccan home built around an interior courtyard or garden. From the street, it may look quiet. Inside, it can become tile, palms, plunge pools, candlelight, and your entire personality for three days.

🧺 Souk
The market, but make it sensory theater. Souks are where spices, leather, lanterns, rugs, ceramics, and excellent bargaining stamina all live together under one very photogenic roofline.

🫧 Hammam
A Moroccan bathhouse ritual built around steam, scrubbing, cleansing, and full-body renewal. Think less spa appointment, more cultural reset button with better tiles.

💙 Majorelle Blue
The electric cobalt shade made famous by Jardin Majorelle, later restored by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. In a city of red walls and desert light, this blue arrives like a plot twist.

Basecamp: El Fenn

El Fenn works because it understands Marrakech’s best architectural drama: the contrast between exterior restraint and interior theater.

From the street, it keeps its secrets. Inside, the mood shifts into saturated color, carved plaster, cedar ceilings, leather floors, mid-century furniture, art, courtyards, pools, and the kind of rooftop that makes “just one drink” a very fragile promise.

It is boutique, but not timid. The hotel has 41 individually styled rooms and suites, three swimming pools, a 1,300-square-metre roof terrace, two cocktail bars, two restaurants, a spa, and a shop.

Translation: you can use it as a stylish medina hideout, a dinner address, a shopping stop, or the place you return to when the souks have won.

Book it for: design people, first-time Marrakech travelers who want a softer landing, couples, friend trips, and anyone who wants the riad fantasy without sacrificing the polish of a full hotel.

Skip this if: you want big-resort anonymity, a silent desert retreat, or a property that looks the same in every room.

The move: arrive, drop the bags, and head upstairs. The rooftop tells you exactly where you are.

The Cosy Rooms
At El Fenn, smaller does not mean stripped back. The Cosy Rooms sit inside the original house, above the spa, or within Colonel House, and they carry the hotel’s signature mix of mid-century ease and traditional Moroccan detail: hand-crafted decor, tadelakt or carved plasterwork, art from Vanessa’s private collection, king-sized beds with hand-stitched Egyptian cotton linen, bathrobes, and the essential overhead shower. Some also have a tadelakt bath tub.

At 20 square metres, this is the stylish entry point rather than the grand gesture. Think of it as the room category for travelers who plan to use El Fenn properly: breakfast, afternoon tea and cake, a pool pause, a rooftop drink, and a soft landing after the medina.

Why it works: the Cosy Rooms give you the El Fenn mood without asking the room to be the whole trip. Marrakech is outside the door. El Fenn is waiting behind it.

Extra Large Rooms
At El Fenn, extra space is not just a nicer category. It is part of the Marrakech rhythm: the medina compresses, then the room gives you room to exhale.

The Extra Large Rooms start from 46 square metres and are styled with art, design classics, hand-crafted details, a large lounge area, fireplace, and a separate large bathroom with bath, monsoon shower, soaking tubs, and toilet. Some have scene-stealing details like a 23-carat gold leafed headboard or a freestanding silver roll-top bath, which is exactly the kind of quiet drama Marrakech does best.

This is the room category to book if you want the riad fantasy to feel less like a place to sleep and more like part of the destination itself.

The move: Make the room a chapter of the trip, not just the place you return to after the souks.

Pro tip: Book the room with an oversized soaking tub. Thank us later.

This is where El Fenn earns its “stay in the medina, disappear from the medina” status.

The spa is built around Moroccan reset rituals: hammams in a traditional tadelakt-lined steam room, fireside massages, hydrating facials, and treatments designed to make you slow down before the city pulls you back outside.

Products come from Moroccan beauty brand Maison D’Asa, using ingredients like orange blossom, lavender, verveine, argan oil, and prickly pear oil.

The pools are the real flex. El Fenn is one of the few hotels in the medina with a swimming pool, and it has three: a 13-metre rooftop pool heated to 24 degrees, a 12-metre lap pool surrounded by jungle-like foliage near the Colonnade Cafe, and an 8-metre spa pool heated year-round.

Hotel guests get the pool access, which matters in a city where the best afternoon plan is often “retreat beautifully.”

The move: Do the hammam, then aim for the rooftop pool. Marrakech is better after steam, stillness, and a view.

The rooftop is the obvious move, and for once, obvious is not a criticism.

El Fenn’s rooftop restaurant and bar are open daily for lunch, dinner, drinks, snacks, and sunset theater. Non-residents can come up too, which means there is a buzz, but it still feels more edited than chaotic. The view takes in the medina, the Koutoubia, and on a clear day, the Atlas Mountains doing their best cinematic backdrop impression.

The food leans local and seasonal, with produce from local farms and markets, meat and fish sourced from the Atlantic Ocean and Atlas Mountains, and the kind of herbs, spices, and aromatics that remind you where you are without turning dinner into a costume.

The move: go before sunset, not at sunset. Marrakech rooftops reward the early, the patient, and the person who knows that the best table is rarely found by arriving at peak hour.

Also useful: the Colonnade Cafe is reserved for in-house guests, which gives hotel residents a calmer downstairs counterpoint to the rooftop scene.

The spot: Kabana.
For rooftop wine in Marrakech, Kabana is the move when you want to leave the hotel but stay in the city’s golden-hour orbit. It sits above the medina with the kind of terrace energy Marrakech does well: music, warm light, a little scene, and enough polish to make a glass of wine feel like the beginning of the evening rather than a pre-dinner errand.

Kabana leans Mediterranean with sushi, cocktails, and a thoughtfully curated wine list, so this is not the quiet riad-courtyard version of Marrakech. It is louder, glossier, and more social — which is exactly why it works here.

The move: book ahead, go before sunset, and order Moroccan wine if available. Marrakech rooftops are not where you prove how spontaneous you are. They are where you arrive early and look annoyingly correct for doing so.

Three dinner reservations worth leaving the riad for.

Sahbi Sahbi: Modern Moroccan cooking with soul, not souk cosplay.Sahbi Sahbi is the dinner to book when you want Moroccan food that feels rooted, stylish, and alive. The restaurant celebrates the cooking of the dadas, the women who have traditionally carried Moroccan recipes from one generation to the next, and the room gives the whole thing a polished Gueliz glow.

What to order: the tanjia de jarret de boeuf if it is on the menu. Add a spread of cooked Moroccan salads to start, then let the table get a little crowded. That is the point.

Nomad: A modern medina dinner with rooftop energy. Nomad is the easy recommendation that still earns its place. It sits in the medina, works beautifully for sunset, and gives traditional Moroccan flavors a cleaner, more contemporary frame. This is where you go when you want atmosphere without committing to a very formal dinner.

What to order: start with the zucchini fritters with feta, basil, argan oil, and mint yogurt. Then order the slow-cooked lamb confit with fava bean purée, or the pan-seared fish of the day with almond-lemon pesto if you want something lighter. Finish with the amlou tiramisu because honey, almond, and argan oil understand dessert better than most people.

Plus61: The palate reset. After a few days of tagines, rooftops, and cumin-scented everything, Plus61 is the Gueliz dinner that gives the trip a little air. It is fresh, simple, seasonal, and ingredient-led, with an Australian-Mediterranean point of view that still feels right in Marrakech.

What to order: follow the seasonal menu, but anchor the table with something vegetable-forward and something from the grill or fish side. This is less about one signature dish and more about ordering like someone who understands balance.

Marrakech is best approached as a sequence of thresholds. Do less, but choose better.

Jardin Majorelle
Go for the blue, yes, but stay for the composition. Cactus, palms, bamboo, water, shadow, and that ultramarine Majorelle blue make the garden feel less like a landmark and more like a controlled visual jolt. It is popular for a reason. Book ahead when possible and go early if you want the spell before the crowd catches up.

Dar el Bacha
This is the coffee stop with architectural receipts. Built in 1910 as the “house of the Pasha,” Dar el Bacha now carries one of the city’s more polished café rituals through Bacha Coffee. Is it a scene? Yes. Is that sometimes the point? Also yes.

The Medina
Do not treat the medina like a checklist. It is a UNESCO-listed historic center for a reason, with monumental doors, gardens, the Koutoubia, the Kasbah, battlements, and centuries of political, economic, and cultural weight behind the spectacle. Hire a good guide for your first pass, then go back alone once the map feels less like a dare.

Gueliz
When the medina gets too dense, cross into Gueliz for galleries, boutiques, cafés, and a more contemporary Marrakech. Less labyrinth, more design crawl.

The Agafay Desert
Not the Sahara, and better when you stop pretending it is. The Agafay is for a lunch, a sunset, a pool day, or one night under a much bigger sky. Keep expectations edited and it works beautifully.

Morocco’s currency is the Moroccan dirham, abbreviated MAD and often written locally as DH.

The easy traveler math: 100 MAD is roughly €9 to €10 or about $10 to $11, depending on the day’s rate and where you exchange. Hotels, airport counters, and card networks may not use the same rate, so keep the math loose and avoid treating every tagine like a Bloomberg terminal.

The move: carry some cash for taxis, tips, market stalls, and small purchases. Use a card at hotels and more polished restaurants when accepted.

Pack for contrast.

Marrakech is polished but practical: flat sandals or loafers for uneven medina walks, linen that can handle heat, a light layer for evenings, sunglasses with actual coverage, and something sharper for dinner because the city dresses better than it needs to.

For the medina, think covered shoulders and easy silhouettes. For rooftops and hotel dinners, bring the pieces that make you feel like you understood the assignment without trying too hard.

The best accessory is patience. The second best is cash.

Marrakech Personal Shopper
Souks, craft, and design without the “where did I just buy this?” regret. Marrakech is one of the world’s great shopping cities, but the souks are not exactly built for casual browsing.

A private shopping guide changes the whole experience: less wandering into tourist traps, more access to artisans, design stores, textiles, lighting, rugs, and the pieces that actually make sense once you get them home.

Marrakech Personal Shopper is the guide to consider if your version of a souvenir leans less keychain, more handwoven textile, ceramic, lantern, or rug with a story. Their focus is Moroccan craft, ethical sourcing, handmade goods, and insider access to the medina’s best workshops and shops.

The move: go early in the trip. It helps you understand quality, pricing, and what is worth carrying home.

Moroccan Food Tour
The edible version of a city orientation. Do this when you want Marrakech to make more sense through bread ovens, street snacks, neighborhood stalls, family-run spots, spices, sweets, and the kind of everyday food that rarely shows up on hotel menus.

Moroccan Food Tour runs guided food walks led by local experts, with small groups, an easy walking pace, and a focus on real Moroccan food, not just greatest-hits tagines.

Their Marrakech food tour includes 6+ food stops over roughly 3 to 4 hours, which is exactly the right amount of structure for a city where “just follow your nose” can become confusing very quickly.

The move: book it early, ideally on night one or two. You will eat better for the rest of the trip.

Marrakech is not a city you simply arrive in. It is a city you enter.

Through a hotel door. A garden gate. A café courtyard. A souk turn. A rooftop staircase. A riad that looks like nothing from the outside and then becomes the entire reason you booked the flight.

El Fenn is the right basecamp because it plays the same game as the city: discreet at first glance, deeply atmospheric once you are inside.

Come for the color. Stay for the doors.

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