MARRAKECH: THE RIADS: PART 1

A riad is a Moroccan townhouse. It’s built around an ornamental garden which provides light, fresh air, beauty, and cool quiet to the rooms around it. Remember that the beauty of a Moroccan house lies within, not without. Exterior ornamentation has little importance. And so the beautiful and palatial town houses might have ornamental doors or they might be hidden behind a very innocuous door.

Some of the most sumptuous riads in Marrakech were the Zitoun riads, situated to the south of the souks and the Jemaâ-el-Fna. It is through these narrow, rather plain looking streets that Jade passed in search of her mother in her 1920 adventure, The Serpent’s Daughter.

But what lay on the other side of the door were hidden secrets, which would not even be revealed when the door was first opened.

NEXT WEEK: INSIDE THE RIADS