Wheresnik Book with Nik
The pool at La Sultana lying between brick arcades of carved columns and horseshoe arches, with daybeds along the far side in late afternoon light

Inspection · Kasbah, Marrakech, Morocco

La Sultana Marrakech

Four riads joined into one house inside the walls of the Kasbah, two minutes from the Saadian Tombs, where the day outside is loud and the day inside is not.

A suite in Riad Bahia Virtuoso

Book La Sultana with me, through Classic Travel Register first, free of charge, and the rates and partner benefits open up, with the account linked to Wheresnik. Tell me your dates before you book and I will say which room to ask for here, and which week I would avoid.

Marrakech does not do calm. The city is a negotiation from the moment you are inside the walls, and that is most of why people come. La Sultana sits in the Kasbah, which is the quiet quarter, and what it offers is the other half of that bargain: four riads joined into a single house of twenty-eight rooms, with a door that closes behind you and courtyards on the far side of it. The hotel holds one Michelin Key. What it holds for a guest is the thing no plaque measures, which is the drop in volume between the lane and the first fountain.

The rooftops of Marrakech at sunset seen from the terrace at La Sultana, with a pierced lantern finial in the foreground and the Atlas in the distance
From the roof at six, looking out over everything you spent the day walking through.

The Kasbah, and getting in

The Kasbah is inside the medina walls, a couple of minutes from the Saadian Tombs, within reach of the Royal Palace and the Bahia Palace, and about ten minutes on foot from Jemaa el-Fna. The hotel runs an airport transfer and on the first day I would take it. The lanes tighten as you approach and knowing which gate to stop at is worth something.

Then there is the question I am asked more than any other about this city, usually by Americans and usually first: is it safe. In the Kasbah, in my experience, yes. I walked back after dark on every evening of the stay and thought about it on none of them. The quarter is residential and quiet and the hotel sits in the middle of it.

A doorman in a red jacket and white trousers standing against the pink wall beside the La Sultana entrance in the Kasbah
The door from the lane. Everything on the other side of it is a different afternoon.
A pair of studded timber doors standing open under a horseshoe arch onto a sunlit square in the Kasbah
The Kasbah through an open gate. Two minutes from here to the Saadian Tombs.
A tall arched glass door at La Sultana opening onto a courtyard with the pool beyond
The first door inside. From here the noise of the city is already gone.

Four riads, one house

The building is four riads knocked together, so you move between courtyards and there are almost no corridors in it. Each one has been given its own temperature: brick arcades and carved capitals around the pool, zellige underfoot in another, carved timber galleries and a cactus in a third. Twenty-eight rooms and suites, no two of them the same, which makes the question of which room you are getting a real one.

A tiled courtyard at La Sultana at night with a carved stone fountain at the centre and lanterns in the arcades
The fountain in the dark, with the lanterns on. Somebody goes round and lights them.
Looking down onto a courtyard floor at La Sultana laid in a black and white zellige star around a stone basin
Seen from the gallery above. The floor is doing more work than most ceilings.
A brick vaulted arcade at La Sultana with carved columns, a pierced metal lantern and tall plants
The brick is the old building. Everything hanging from it was chosen later and chosen well.

The suite

I had a suite in Riad Bahia. Plaster the colour of the city, a fireplace, carved screens standing between the bed and the sitting end, lanterns hung low, and a red rug that stops the room from being polite. The bathroom is the part I would photograph again: two gilt mirrors over a stone basin, a shower set into its own horseshoe niche, and nothing on the shelf that has not earned its place.

A suite at La Sultana with a wide bed, a fireplace, a framed print and a red patterned rug
The suite in Riad Bahia. The fireplace works, which in January is more than decoration.
A bed at La Sultana between carved timber screens with lanterns hanging low on either side
Carved screens where walls would be. The room is divided by what you can see through.
A pair of babouches set side by side on a red patterned rug at the foot of the bed at La Sultana
The slippers, put out while you are at dinner and placed exactly like this.
Two gilt oval mirrors above a stone basin at La Sultana with a pale green cabinet below
Two mirrors where one would have done, which tells you the house's position on restraint.
A shower set into a horseshoe arched niche at La Sultana beside a round gilt mirror and a stone basin
The shower inside its own arch. The plaster goes all the way up and the room stays warm.
A chased silver box, a water bottle with a La Sultana tag and two handwritten cards on a dark table
Cards written by hand, which I notice every time and which almost nobody does any more.

The morning

Breakfast happens in the part of the house that holds the pool, under the arcade beside the water, and that arrangement decides the shape of the first hour. You come down into a courtyard with brick going up on three sides, the light moving across it, and nobody hurrying you. It runs long. The pool is heated and in January it is a real option from the middle of the morning.

The pool at La Sultana in daylight between brick arcades with turquoise cushions on the stone benches
The arcaded courtyard at eleven. The water is heated, which in January is the difference.
A breakfast of pastries and orange juice laid on a white cloth beside the pool at La Sultana
Breakfast beside the water. The jug of juice arrives and then nobody comes back for an hour.
A breakfast plate with eggs and pastries, a coffee cup in blue patterned ceramic and a glass of orange juice at La Sultana
The ceramics are local and they are used, not displayed.
A tiered silver stand of Moroccan pastries and a berry tart on a laid table at La Sultana
Moroccan pastries at breakfast, which is the correct number of pastries.
Two straw hats laid on loungers beside the pool at La Sultana with the brick arcade behind
The hats sit on the loungers for anyone who wants one. Nobody announces this.
A wide straw hat embroidered La Sultana in green thread, held up against a courtyard and a blue sky
The embroidery on the brim. I have a weakness for a hat with a name on it.

The hammam

Below the house there are vaulted rooms with a long narrow pool running down the middle of them, lit by lanterns, and this is the quietest part of the building. I did the Royal Hammam and then the argan oil massage, in that order, and the order is the point: the hammam takes the day off you and the massage arrives on a body that has already stopped arguing. Do it on the afternoon of a day you have spent in the souks.

A vaulted spa at La Sultana with marble columns, a long narrow pool and a chandelier of pierced metal
Below the house, where the ceiling is brick and the sound goes nowhere.
The spa pool at La Sultana under hanging glass lanterns with wicker loungers along one side
Lanterns the whole length of it. At four in the afternoon there was nobody else down here.
Feet in slippers at the end of a lounger beside the lantern lit spa pool at La Sultana
After the hammam, which is the moment the day actually ends.
The pool at La Sultana lit at night between the brick arcades, with the arches reflected in the water
The same courtyard after dinner. The brick holds the heat of the day and gives it back.

The roof, and the hour before dinner

The terrace runs across the top of the house, two thousand square metres of it, and looks over the Koutoubia minaret with the Atlas behind on a clear evening. I took my aperitivo up there on each of the evenings. The bottle that came up was a Deutz Brut Classic with the house's own collar on the neck, which is a small vanity and a good one: somebody decided the hotel should have a cuvée and then went and had it made.

Carved black seating and a table on the terrace at La Sultana with the green tiled roofs and the Koutoubia minaret behind
The roof in the afternoon, with the minaret where it always is.
Palms and planted pots on the roof terrace at La Sultana against an orange sunset sky with the minaret in the distance
Six o'clock, the ten minutes when the whole city turns the same colour.
A bottle of Deutz Brut Classic with a Cuvee La Sultana neck collar and a filled glass on a chased silver tray
The house cuvee, on a tray that has been polished for longer than the champagne has been cold.

The house after dark

The lamps go on at dusk and the building changes register completely. Lanterns in every arcade, candles on the low tables, the striped plaster in the stairwells catching the light sideways, and silver doors that nobody has got around to describing because they are standing open most of the time.

A salon at La Sultana at night with carved plaster arches, a hanging lantern and low tables on a patterned floor
The salon at ten, on the way through to somewhere else.
A carved gilt mirror and a console with coral coloured flowers against a blue and white striped wall at La Sultana
Stripes on a wall in a riad, which should not work and does.
A pair of doors clad in chased silver with heavy ring handles at La Sultana, standing ajar onto a lit room
Doors clad in worked silver. In most houses this would be the whole story.

Coming back from the souks

Marrakech outside the walls of this house is a contest, and the souks are the part of it that takes everything you have. You will spend an afternoon haggling and you will come back having bought something you cannot carry. This is where the hotel earns its keep. You come through the door, somebody brings mint tea, the noise stops, and the thing you bought looks better on a courtyard table than it did on the stall.

Stacks of hand painted Moroccan bowls and plates in blue, black and pink patterns in a souk
The afternoon's work. Everything here was a negotiation and most of it was fun.
A brass teapot, a glass of mint tea and two crescent pastries on a carved table at La Sultana
Mint tea back at the house, poured from a height for reasons nobody will explain.
A row of glass bottles each holding a single yellow rose on a console below a framed landscape at La Sultana
One rose per bottle, lined up along the console. Somebody does this every few days.

Advisor's perspective

This is the house for somebody who wants Marrakech at full volume and a door to close against it. Two people with four or five days will do very well: the medina in the morning, the hammam in the afternoon, the roof at six. It suits a first visit to the city better than almost anything else I know, because the location does the work and the Kasbah is calm in a way the rest of the medina is not.

It is not a resort and it does not pretend to be. There is a pool and a spa and a roof, and the rest of the day is outside. Anybody who wants to arrive and never leave the property should be in the Palmeraie and will be happier there.

What I would protect: the transfer on the first day, the hammam on the right afternoon, and the hour on the roof before dinner. Everything else arranges itself.

The Koutoubia minaret lit at night beyond the dark roof terrace at La Sultana with a pierced lantern in the foreground
The minaret from the roof, late, when the terrace has emptied out.
Green and palm printed cushions on a rooftop banquette at La Sultana looking over green tiled roofs to the minaret
The last morning, from the banquette, with the bags already downstairs.

Before you book

The questions people send me about La Sultana.

Where exactly is La Sultana, and is the area safe at night?
It is on Rue de la Kasbah, inside the walls of the medina, a couple of minutes on foot from the Saadian Tombs and close to the Royal Palace and the Bahia Palace. Jemaa el-Fna is about ten minutes away walking. The Kasbah is the quiet quarter and I walked back to the hotel after dark without a second thought on any evening. I am aware that this is the question many American travellers ask first, so I will answer it plainly: of the places I have stayed in this city, this is the one I would send somebody nervous about the medina.
How is the hotel laid out?
Four riads joined together into one house of twenty-eight rooms and suites, so you move between courtyards and there are almost no corridors in it. Each courtyard has its own character, its own planting and its own light, and the pool sits in the arcaded one. I had a suite in Riad Bahia. It is worth understanding this before you book: the room you get decides which courtyard you wake up in.
Where is breakfast, and is there a pool?
There is a pool, and breakfast is served in the same part of the house, under the arcade beside it. That arrangement is better than it sounds, because you come down in the morning to a courtyard with water in it and the light coming over the brick, and the first hour of the day happens there. The pool is heated.
Is there a spa, and what should I book?
There is, and I would book two things: the Royal Hammam and the argan oil massage. I did both and the sequence is the point. The spa sits below the house in vaulted rooms with a long narrow pool, lit by lanterns, and it is the quietest place in the building.
What should I see in Marrakech from here?
I did the classics and they are classics for a reason: the Jardin Majorelle, Jemaa el-Fna in the evening when it fills up, and the Bahia Palace. From the Kasbah you can walk to the Saadian Tombs in minutes and to Jemaa el-Fna in ten, which makes the hotel a real base and not somewhere you drive back to. Leave an afternoon for the souks and leave your patience at full charge.

Something else you want to know? Write to me and I will answer it here.

The glazed pavilion on the roof terrace at La Sultana at dusk with the Koutoubia minaret behind Wrought iron daybeds with pale cushions in a courtyard at La Sultana under an old olive tree A long banquette of green and palm printed cushions under a cane roof at La Sultana Looking down over blue tiled roofs into a white courtyard with a small plunge pool at La Sultana Black carved seating around a table on the roof terrace at La Sultana with the minaret and palms at sunset A galleried courtyard at La Sultana with carved timber balconies, a cactus and a shallow green pool

Book online

Via Classic Travel, with the benefits attached.

The hotel's own rate, booked through a Virtuoso preferred-partner agency. Register once; the account stays linked to Wheresnik.

Check rates at La Sultana →

Or let me arrange it

The room, the dates, the rest of the list.

Write in English, Italian or Spanish. I answer personally, usually within a day.

Let Nik arrange it →