El Fenn - Pool

El Fenn sits behind an unassuming door in the Bab El Ksour quarter of the Medina, five minutes on foot from Jemaa el-Fna and within sight of the Koutoubia. What opens up inside is a labyrinth of five connected courtyards, forty-one rooms, and three pools threaded through a structure that began life as a nineteenth-century Caïd's palace. The name means "art" in Arabic, and the interiors make the case: tadelakt walls in hot pink and teal, zellige floors, carved cedar ceilings, mid-century furniture, and a rotating collection of contemporary Moroccan and African work on nearly every surface. The pools at El Fenn each occupy a different register. On the rooftop, a thirteen-metre heated pool stretches across the 1,300-square-metre terrace with the Atlas Mountains holding the southern skyline and the Koutoubia's minaret to the west. Day beds line the edges; cocktails arrive from the bar. Below, on the ground floor, a twelve-metre lap pool sits in a courtyard thick with greenery, cooler and quieter, with the Colonnade Café just steps away. A third, smaller pool in the spa stays heated year-round, enclosed by tadelakt and candlelight. All three are reserved for hotel guests. What makes the pool experience here distinct is context. This is not a resort at the city's edge but a riad in the thick of the Medina, where the sound of the souks fades as the water stills. The rooftop catches the last light over the old city; the ground floor holds it in green shade. Two ways to swim in the same building, governed by entirely different moods.