Royal Mansour

Have you ever wondered what you’d do if you could build a house and literally not have to think about the budget? Well that’s what happened when King Mohammed VI dreamed up the Royal Mansour – the most opulent of Marrakech’s hotels, which opened last summer. The idea of the Mansour was to create a top international hotel that showcases the best of contemporary Moroccan craftsmanship. The result, which took a cast of 1,500 workers over three-and-a-half years to create, more than meets the brief.

The sheer luxury of the project can take the breath away: take, for example, the ability to flood part of the entrance hall and create an internal pool at the flick of a switch – or the elaborate nether-world of underground passageways through which staff transport themselves (on golf carts) unseen, between rooms. But it’s the sheer exuberance and execution of the design, overseen by French agency 3bis, that really excites. Plasterwork carved as if by angels… a backlit silverwork ceiling that brings to mind the most elegant of William Morris wallpapers…mosaics so perfect a super-computer couldn’t have laid the tiles more accurately. With every turn you see something that in the wrong hands could have ended up overly classical or horribly glitzy, but has in fact been marshalled into a thoroughly modern reflection of Morocco’s traditions and forward-facing attitude.