Four Seasons Resort Marrakech

A low line of ochre pavilions, set among olive trees and palms on the western edge of Marrakech, marks Four Seasons Resort Marrakech, which opened in 2011 on 40 acres beside the Menara Gardens. The resort was built new rather than converted from a palace, and it reads as a garden first: the buildings never rise above a few storeys, and most of the site is lawn, water and planting.

History

The resort opened in 2011, the first Four Seasons in Morocco; the brand's Casablanca hotel followed four years later. The land sits on Avenue de la Menara, between the Hivernage district and the Menara olive grove, which the Almohad rulers laid out in the twelfth century around a reflecting basin. The avenue became a hotel quarter in the 2000s, and unlike the palace hotels of the medina or the Hivernage, the house had no earlier life; its design set out to borrow the forms of Moorish architecture at a scale that suits families and groups.

Architecture and design

The plan is Moorish in vocabulary: arcades, carved plaster, zellige tilework, courtyards with fountains and a central avenue of water. Guest rooms occupy a cluster of pavilions, each only a few floors high, linked by paths through the gardens. Two pools lie in the grounds, one kept for adults, the other for families, and the villas have pools of their own. The gardens are the main event, 16 hectares of them, with the High Atlas visible on clear winter days beyond the olive trees of the Menara.

Rooms and suites

The rooms are large by the standards of Marrakech, with terraces or balconies over the gardens and bathrooms in marble. Suites add sitting rooms, and the villas are walled houses with private gardens and pools, used by families and by wedding parties who want a compound of their own. Interiors mix Moroccan craft, carved wood and tilework, with the neutral palette the brand favours in its newer houses.

Dining

Several restaurants and bars serve the resort, with a poolside table for Mediterranean and Moroccan dishes, a lounge that takes over the evenings, and breakfast laid in the gardens. The resort also runs a children's club, which shapes the feel of the family pool in school holidays. Private dinners are set up on the villa terraces.

Wellness

The spa occupies its own building with a traditional hammam, treatment rooms and a fitness centre. Hammam rituals with black soap and ghassoul clay follow the local custom, and the gardens give the spa a quiet that the hotels inside the medina walls cannot offer. Tennis courts and the pools complete the picture.

Weddings and events

The resort hosts weddings, both in its gardens and in its indoor event rooms, and the villa compound lets a family take over a private area for the days around a ceremony. Meetings and incentive groups use the function rooms and the lawns; the size of the site and the proximity of the airport make it one of the larger group venues in the city. The names and capacities of the rooms are not confirmed here.

Location

The resort stands on Avenue de la Menara, roughly ten minutes by car from Jemaa el-Fna and the medina, and about the same from Marrakech Menara Airport, whose runway lies just beyond the olive groves. The Menara Gardens, with their pavilion and reflecting basin, are next door. Hivernage, with its restaurants and the Théâtre Royal, starts a few hundred metres to the east, and the Gueliz shopping district lies beyond it. For a luxury hotel in Marrakech that wants space and gardens rather than a medina address, this is one of the handful of options, and the only one of its brand in the city.