The Oberoi, Marrakech - Pool

The Oberoi Marrakech occupies twenty-eight acres along the Route d'Ouarzazate, roughly twenty-five minutes from the Medina, built on the site of a former olive farm whose groves still organise the landscape. The property holds 2,500 olive trees and 3,000 citrus trees, and the architecture sits within them rather than replacing them: geometric buildings in Moorish style emerge from orchards, connected by water features, fountains, and a 240-metre Grand Canal that draws the eye from the main building straight to the Atlas Mountains on the horizon. The main courtyard reproduces the design of the 14th-century Medersa Ben Youssef, handworked by over two hundred craftsmen across seven years, and the effect at ground level is of a property where decoration and landscape hold equal weight. The main pool sits among the olive groves and palms, large enough to anchor the garden and open enough to pull in the mountain view. The design carries an Indian influence consistent with the Oberoi group's heritage: loungers and daybeds are positioned on raised platforms and islands within and around the water, giving the pool area a layered quality where shade, sun, and surface alternate. The Azur restaurant and bar operates poolside through the day, serving light plates pitched at the setting: crudos, salads, grilled dishes, and drinks that arrive without interrupting the quiet. The atmosphere around the pool is calm by design. With seventy-eight villas spread across eleven hectares, each with its own private heated nine-metre pool, most guests swim at home, which means the main pool rarely crowds even at full occupancy. The olive groves press in close enough that the scent of rosemary and citrus reaches the water. Two further restaurants sit within the main building. Tamint serves Moroccan and Mediterranean cooking on a terrace overlooking the gardens, canal, and mountains through breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rivayat offers Pan-Indian fine dining in a separate register entirely. The spa covers 2,000 square metres on a waterbody surrounded by orchards, with Ayurvedic and Moroccan-inspired treatments, hammam, heated indoor pool, yoga pavilion, and private rejuvenation rooms. Tennis, padel, and pickleball courts sit within the grounds. A kids' club operates daily. Eighty-four rooms and villas are serviced by butlers. The five deluxe rooms in the main building overlook the gardens from an elevated position. The villas, which account for nearly all accommodation, each come with private walled garden, heated pool, freestanding bathtub, and rain shower that opens directly onto the terrace. The palette throughout runs muted ivory and burnished gold with ornate Moroccan detail. The Oberoi treats its pool as one quiet element within a property whose real subject is the relationship between architecture, orchard, and mountain, and the main pool benefits from that proportion: large, unhurried, set among trees old enough to have been there long before the first stone was laid.