Morocco the kingdom that gets under your skin

There is a moment on the first morning in Marrakech — and it comes for everyone, though at different hours — when you stop trying to process what’s happening and simply let it happen. The call to prayer at dawn, the sound of the city coming awake, the smell of bread baking somewhere and charcoal starting somewhere else. The light at seven in the morning hits the pink walls of the medina and does something with them that no photograph has ever adequately captured.

Marrakech is overwhelming by design. The medina is still a functioning city — bread baked in communal ovens, craftsmen working in the same lanes their grandfathers worked, a density of life that makes the best European neighborhoods feel spacious and underwritten. Jemaa el-Fna, the main square, transforms completely between morning and night: fruit juice vendors and Quranic scribes by day, then as the sun drops, smoke from dozens of food stalls, acrobats and storytellers and musicians, the whole square becoming something between a carnival and a marketplace that has been operating in exactly this way for five centuries.

The Koutoubia Mosque, the oldest and largest in Marrakech, rises above the square with its 77-meter minaret — the model for both the Giralda in Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat, which tells you everything about the reach of Moroccan architecture into medieval Spain. Walk toward it in the early evening when the swallows are circling the tower and the calls to prayer are overlapping from different directions across the city.

Nobody goes to Marrakech expecting their best meal to be at an Australian restaurant. And yet.

+61, named for Australia’s international calling code, is the restaurant that locals, expats, and serious food travelers keep coming back to, earning a place on the MENA 50 Best list. Owners Cassandra Karinsky and Sebastian de Gzell, with chef Andrew Cibej, have created something genuinely unusual: moss green banquettes, brass sconces, blush pink marble tables commissioned from local artisans, food made almost entirely from bio-organic produce sourced from local farms. The breaded chicken — their version of a schnitzel with shredded cabbage and mint salad — is the dish people order and then describe to everyone they know for weeks. It sounds simple. It is simple. It also arrives at something true. On Rue Mohammed el Beqal, Gueliz. Book ahead.

Al Fassia, on Boulevard Mohammed Zerktouni in Gueliz, has been serving benchmark traditional Moroccan cooking for decades, run entirely by women. The cuisine is Fez-style — widely considered the finest regional cooking in Morocco. The lamb tagine with prunes and almonds is the dish the city keeps coming back to. The chicken pastilla is the other reason to be here. Book ahead.

SABO at the Selman Palace is the serious fine dining option — a 1920s-inspired palace hotel outside the medina, with a restaurant helmed by Jean-François Piège, the Michelin-starred Paris chef. The setting is extraordinary, the cooking is exceptional, and the price reflects both. Worth it for a special evening.

Les Jardins du Lotus is the hidden one — tucked into the Dar El Bacha district in the medina, inside a restored 19th-century riad, through the kind of narrow alley that makes you wonder if you’ve taken a wrong turn right up until the moment you step inside and find a garden courtyard of such calm and beauty that the city falls away. A Mexican chef leads the kitchen — an unlikely pairing that works completely. Good cocktails. Book ahead.

Mizaan, on Avenue Mohammed V in Gueliz, is the new address that the city’s creative crowd has adopted — sharing plates, very good cocktails, a room that feels like it was designed by someone who takes both food and atmosphere seriously. The place to be seen right now.

La Trattoria has been in Gueliz since 1974 — fifty years — in a 1920s art deco villa designed by the American decorator Bill Willis, with a lantern-lit poolside courtyard that is one of the most beautiful restaurant settings in the city. Honest Italian food. The setting earns the visit.

L’mida, in a traditional house in the medina near Place des Épices, is the rooftop the city keeps returning to — modern Moroccan fusion from Chef Narjisse Benkabbou, a sharing-style menu, and the highest terrace in the medina with views over the rooftops to the Atlas Mountains. Founded by two friends, Omar and Simo, the name comes from Darija — the Moroccan dialect word for table. No alcohol, but the fresh juices and mocktails are genuinely good. Book ahead.

Frikiss is fifteen minutes outside the city by taxi, and it is exactly what you think it is: plastic chairs, a fire, and the best Moroccan grill you will eat in Marrakech. Lamb roasted the traditional way, meat that has been thought about by people who have been doing this their entire lives. Go with a group. Arrive hungry. This is the one that makes everything else feel slightly self-conscious by comparison.

For one night when you want Marrakech to feel like a full production: Comptoir Darna in the Hivernage district has been the city’s dinner-with-a-show institution since 1999. Belly dancers, musicians, a room of dramatic Moroccan design. Arrive after 9:30pm when the show starts. Not every night. But one night — yes.

For sunset: the rooftop at El Fenn in the medina is one of the great views in Marrakech, with the city spreading in every direction below and the Atlas Mountains visible on clear days. Kabana, also in the medina, is the newer alternative — equally good views, a slightly younger crowd.

Morocco’s craft tradition is not souvenir territory. It is a living practice — leather tanned in the same vats that have been used since the Middle Ages, silver worked by hand, textiles woven on looms that require a decade to learn properly.

For clothing: Norya Ayron is the name serious shoppers know — a kaftan designer whose pieces have been worn by Kate Moss and Sharon Stone, cutting traditional shapes and pulling them forward with extraordinary fabric selection. Small shop in the medina, larger one in Gueliz. Oubaich is the other essential stop — dresses, shirts and co-ords in satin silk, woven linen and velvet corduroy in colors and combinations that bear no resemblance to the cut-and-paste kaftan shops surrounding it. Genuinely original. Laly, designed by Basra Benjelloun, does beautiful wearable women’s pieces in quality fabrics with a Moroccan spirit — the kind of thing you arrive home with and actually wear. And on Rue Dar el Bacha, steps from the Dar el Bacha museum, Topolina is the boutique that stops people mid-walk — French designer Isabelle Topolina, former couture patternmaker, who decamped to Marrakech and built a collection from fabrics she found in the souks: festive prints, vintage cuts, the occasional wax-print textile from Senegal. Her son Pierre-Henry runs the men’s shop next door at number 114. Two small shops. Very easy to leave with four dresses and a coat.

Valérie Barkowski: a Belgian designer who arrived in Marrakech in 1996 and spent years on a personal quest to revive the near-extinct tradition of hand-embroidered Moroccan linens, a craft that had all but disappeared when she arrived. The linens are exquisite — table linens, cushions, textiles of genuine beauty and genuine craft. Her boutique is at 142 Arset Aouzel, near Mustapha Blaoui. Visit both on the same afternoon.

Abril Ali at Antiquité du Sahara, Rahba El Kadima number 176, is where to go for Saharan antique jewelry and objects — Berber and Tuareg pieces mostly, silver and brass, things that have traveled a long way to end up here. Fouzi Abril knows what he has and where it came from. Ask him.

In Sidi Ghanem, the design district about fifteen minutes from the medina, several serious contemporary design shops have colonized the old industrial quarter and made it the most interesting shopping destination in the city for those who already know the souks well.