Jardin Majorelle

Jardin Majorelle is one of the great gardens of the twentieth century, a two-hectare enclosure in Gueliz that a French painter began assembling in the 1920s and that two fashion designers saved from development in 1980. The cobalt blue that covers the studio building and the garden structures has become one of the most recognizable colours associated with Marrakech, a particular shade that the garden's creator eventually registered as his own. The planting is as considered as the colour: bamboo thickets that contain sound, water lily pools fed by a constant murmur, rows of low cactus leading the eye toward taller specimens behind, bougainvillea trained over pergolas, and rare palms from across the tropical world. The paths are narrow enough to feel like discovery and wide enough to accommodate the volume of visitors the garden draws. In the morning, before the light goes flat, the combination of cobalt and vegetation has a quality that photographs have difficulty reproducing. The studio building houses the Berber Museum, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum is adjacent to the garden walls, and a well-stocked bookshop occupies the entrance pavilion. The garden is most itself in the early hours, when the crowd has not yet arrived and the fountains are audible. The Berber Museum inside the studio building and the Yves Saint Laurent Museum adjacent to the garden walls extend what is possible in a single visit. The bookshop near the exit holds a considered selection of titles on Moroccan craft, architecture, and design that is not easily found elsewhere in the city.