Royal Mansour, built on 3.5 hectares within the walls of the old city of Marrakech, was created to authentically represent the classic forms of the traditional medina – an elegant composition of Riads, restaurants and a spa, arranged around the reception area,with its lobby, dining, bar, lounges and library. It was handmade by 1,200 artisans using the best stones, marbles, tiles, silks, satins, beads, feathers and cedar. For this magnificent place there was no budget, only the royal edict to make it the most beautiful example of Moroccan architecture in the world.
The hotel doesn’t plan to advertise and it is not cheap. Prices run from $1,928 a night for a one-bedroom riad (a traditional, three-story, Moroccan style house), to $5,397 for a two-bedroom, or $38,552 for the almost 20,000-square-foot Riad d’Honneur.
The hotel is designed like an old Moroccan city with winding paths lined with lily ponds and fountains that open suddenly into sunny squares of palm trees, brilliant bougainvillea and aromatic olive and lemon trees. The public spaces—lounges, bars, library, and restaurants—are built, as are the 53 accommodations, as riads with all rooms on all levels opening inwardly onto a courtyard and upwardly to an array of carved arches.
The hotel is designed like an old Moroccan city with winding paths lined with lily ponds and fountains that open suddenly into sunny squares of palm trees, brilliant bougainvillea and aromatic olive and lemon trees. The public spaces—lounges, bars, library, and restaurants—are built, as are the 53 accommodations, as riads with all rooms on all levels opening inwardly onto a courtyard and upwardly to an array of carved arches.
The Royal Mansour hotel has three restaurants all overseen by Yannick Alleno, the chef of Paris’s Le Meurice hotel, where he earned, and has retained, three Michelin stars in 2007. The stars are much in evidence in the setting, service and food at two dinner restaurants, one French and one Moroccan. The ‘Pigeon in Crispy Pastille’ in the Moroccan restaurant is a delicate patty of tender shredded pigeon in crispy layers of millefeuille, an edible work of art, while the ‘Orange Salad’ dessert offers magical orbs of orange ambrosia that burst in your mouth like citrus caviar.
The 26,900 sq.-ft. spa is located in its own glazed pavilion surrounded by a moat and features a fitness center, spa treatment rooms, and an indoor pool.
In the Royal Mansour hotel, Scheherazade would have found enough cozy corners in which to tell a different tale on a different divan every night.
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