Le Jardin Secret

Le Jardin Secret occupies a historic riad compound in the heart of the Medina, reached through a narrow derb that gives no hint of the scale behind the gate. The ground was built on in the second half of the sixteenth century, when a Saadian sultan pushed the city into what is now the Mouassine quarter, and the palace that stood here was destroyed at the end of the seventeenth. What you walk through was rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century by the kaid al-Hajj Abd-Allah U-Bihi, who kept the Saadian layout and did not enjoy it for long: suspected of intrigue, he was killed with poisoned tea. The house passed to a judge, then in 1912 to the chamberlain of an exiled sultan, who lived here until 1934. After that it fell apart, and stayed that way for decades. Two gardens share the compound. The Islamic one is organized around axial paths and central fountains in the geometry of the tradition; the exotic one gathers species from five continents with a more romantic logic. Between them stands the water tower, and beneath everything runs the khettara, the underground channel from the Atlas foothills that was dug out and put back to work during the restoration. It still feeds the fountains. The rooftop terrace above the tower looks over the Medina to the Koutoubia minaret, which puts the old city in proportion. It is one of the few places in the Medina where sustained quiet is possible at midday.