Marrakech, Morocco · Opened 1923 · gardens from the 18th century · 209 rooms, suites and riads
By invitation. Churchill painted its gardens and called it the loveliest spot in the world, which is the sort of endorsement that usually ages badly. La Mamounia has spent the century since making sure it did not.
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Seventeen acres given to the Alaouite princes in the eighteenth century and planted as an olive and citrus garden long before the hotel existed. They remain the reason to come: three hundred-year-old olive trees, rose walks, kitchen gardens that supply the restaurants, and enough scale that 200 rooms disappear into them.
Jacques Garcia's heavy 2009 redesign was substantially lightened by Jouin Manku from 2020, and the house is better for it — lighter zellige, restored art deco geometry, and a lobby that no longer feels like a stage set. This is now one of the best-looking grand hotels in Africa.
The 2,500 m² spa with its hammams is the best in Morocco and among the best anywhere; book the traditional hammam on the first afternoon, not the last. Of the restaurants, L'Italien and the Moroccan room are both serious, and the pastry counter is a genuine destination for Marrakech residents.
Two hundred keys means peak-week crowding at the main pool, and tour groups do reach the public areas. The medina is a short walk but the immediate approach is city traffic. And rates have risen sharply since the restoration.
One of the four Riads in the garden: walled, with a private pool, a courtyard and dedicated staff, entered from the garden rather than through the hotel. Inside the main building, a Palace Suite on a high floor facing the Atlas is the alternative.
The house is grand rather than quiet, but the gardens absorb everything. A riad stay is genuinely private; a standard room during a busy week is not.
October to April. Marrakech in July and August reaches temperatures that make the gardens unusable by noon.
from €700 per night
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