Le Pavillon de la Kasbah

Le Pavillon de la Kasbah is a ten-room riad in the Marrakech Medina that has approached the question of Moroccan design with a contemporary resolution: the traditional materials are present in zellige, carved plasterwork, and oriental taffetas, but the vocabulary of the rooms is modern, the fabrics light and vaporous, the furniture refined and without the heaviness that the maximalist version of this aesthetic can produce. Ten rooms named after Moroccan spices organize themselves across four levels connected by an elevator, a feature rare enough in a Medina building to count as a practical luxury in its own right. The central patio of two hundred and fifty square metres is bathed in natural light for most of the day, its dimensions producing the particular sense of space that the riad format promises and the best examples deliver. Each room is equipped with a dressing room, work area, king-size bedding, quality linen, and bathrobes, the domestic logic consistent across the building without enforcing uniformity on the rooms themselves. The rooftop pool is finished in blue cement tiles; from its deck the Atlas Mountains are visible on clear afternoons, the view framing the city's roofscape between the pool's edge and the peaks. Le Pavillon de la Kasbah is a Medina property for guests who want the architecture without the ornamental intensity, the location without the density of the experience typical to the older quarter nearby.