Es Saadi palace

Es Saadi has been in operation since the early 1950s, when it opened the first casino in Marrakech, and the resort carries that history in its bones without performing it. Eight hectares of private gardens surround the palace compound, dense with palm trees, banana trees, olive groves, bougainvillea, and the city's characteristic rose, all of it lit by one thousand and one lanterns after dark in a display that justifies the cliché. The palace itself offers ninety-two suites, each designed around a different type of wood, dark or light, mahogany, sculpted, hand-painted, the rooms varied in surface and feel with silk and velvet divans and bronze bathroom mirrors and the occasional canopy bed. Beyond the suites, ten private villas and eight ksars, traditional rammed-clay houses, extend the residential options toward the truly immersive. A lagoon pool of twenty-four hundred square metres anchors the outdoor life; a three-thousand-square-metre spa anchors the interior one, its treatment spaces organized around a century-old eucalyptus tree that the building was constructed to include. The resort's location in the Hivernage area places it minutes from the Medina while maintaining the spatial autonomy of a property that has always operated at its own pace The casino, renovated, continues to operate; it is the oldest in the city. The villas are the property's most private option, each set in its own planted garden with pool and complete separation from the main building. Es Saadi is the kind of resort where the history and the present-day comfort have made their peace.