El Fenn

Vanessa Branson and Howell James bought a crumbling Caïd's palace near Bab El Ksour in 2002 and opened it two years later with six rooms. Since then El Fenn has grown house by house into a chain of linked riads around a series of courtyards, and in late 2025 it passed to the Benabbès-Taarji family's AKAN Collection. The character has held. Rooms are painted in single saturated colours, floors are hand cut zellige or polished tadelakt, the cedar ceilings and carved plasterwork are original, and the furniture is mid century European rather than the usual brass and lanterns. The art on the walls is contemporary African, and the hotel hosted the Marrakech Biennale from 2005 to 2016.

There are three pools. A 12 metre lap pool sits on the ground floor among daybeds, an 8 metre pool in the spa courtyard is heated all year, and on the roof a 13 metre pool kept at 24 degrees shares a terrace of 1,300 square metres with a Berber tent and a bar that fills at sunset. Children have a shallow plunge pool of their own. The spa has a tadelakt steam room and three treatment rooms and is open daily from ten in the morning until six.

The medina is at the door. The Koutoubia and Jemaa el Fna are a few minutes away on foot, the souks a little further, and the entrance is only a few metres past the Bab El Ksour gateway, so new arrivals find their bed without learning the lanes first.