Marrakech

The current passion for ethnicity and colour has conspired to make Marrakech the destination du jour, but that’s nothing new. It was AbFab in the 1930s when Charlie Chaplin and Rita Hayworth dropped in to play, in the 1940s when Winston Churchill frequented the Mamounia and in the 1960s when it became drop-out central for assorted beats, bohemians, heirs and heiresses. OK, so it went a little quiet for a while but these days such is the parade of A-list names swanning across the concourse of the city’s rather modest international airport that one travel agency imposes a ten per cent surcharge on all celebrity bookings.

Marrakech’s hip status has been further cemented in recent times by a string of absurdly stylish accommodations. Tailor-made for days of blissed-out indolence, they are completely addictive. Bearing in mind the cheap price of property here, more than a few visitors have returned home to tell friends, ‘We liked the hotel so much, we bought one just like it.’

Much of what’s best is discreet or hidden and it takes time or luck to find it or figure it out. The more hours spent idly wandering, the greater the chance of stumbling on the kind of place or experience that you can’t find in a guidebook – and that slow sense of discovery, of a city gently opening up like a flower, is what getting to know Marrakech is all about.

The chief landmark is the minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque, which also flags the location of the neighbouring chaotic open market space Jemaa El Fna. To the north are the souks: alley upon alley of tiny shops. Among all the bustle and barter, serenity comes in the form of the Ben Youssef Mederssa (Place Ben Youssef, +212 (0)24 39 09 11), a gorgeous old theological college resplendent with polychromic tiling and lacey plasterwork that threatened to upstage Kate Winslet in the 1998 film Hideous Kinky.

Local history

The history of Morocco is one of dynastic rule, but also of tension between central government and tribal independence, between the relatively orderly plains and coast – known as the Bled El Makzhen – and the ungovernable areas of mountain and desert – the Bled Es Siba. As tribe after tribe forayed out of the Atlas or Sahara to found dynasties in the north, Marrakech would watch history from the border between the two.

Local politics

Moroccans are pinning their hopes on their new king. Under 40 years of age and dynamic, Mohammed VI (M6 to his young fans) won great initial approval when soon after ascending to the throne in 1999 he sacked scores of government officials to make way for reform. Then, when the story got round that after dining at the Mamounia the king pulled out his wallet to settle the tab, his popularity went through the ceiling.