Discover Marrakch in 36 Hours

IN 1939, George Orwell wrote of Westerners flocking to Marrakech in search of “camels, castles, palm-trees, Foreign Legionnaires, brass trays and bandits.” Ever since, the city has been ravishing visitors with its teeming souks, ornate palaces and sybaritic night life. In recent years, a succession of high-end openings and restorations — most notably, the lavish reopening of the hotel La Mamounia...

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La Mamounia Marrakech: A legend

La Mamounia, Marrakech: Few hotels have inspired more glamorous and romantic stories than the grande dame of Marrakech, La Mamounia. The hotel has hosted politicians and celebrities since it opened in the 1920s. In 1943, Winston Churchill asked Franklin D Roosevelt to join him on one of his many visits, describing the hotel as 'the loveliest place on earth'. Alfred Hitchcock used it as the backdrop...

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Marrakech adds modern amenities

Marrakech: Tourists wandering through the ornately tiled rooms of the late-9th-century Bahia Palace, home to a sultan's vizier, his four wives, 24 concubines and countless offspring, can only imagine the domestic juggling act required to get through the day.Not far from here, in a jewel-box-like palace of similar vintage, Driss Segueni ponders a more modern problem. Namely, how to provide for the...

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Marrakech: Visit The Red City

They come out at night As the sun sets, Djemaa el-Fna transforms from bargain bedlam into one of the world's greatest open air restaurants. It's been recognised by Unesco as being part of mankind's cultural heritage  his dye is made from poppies," explained the smiling scarf-seller. "It's the colour of Marrakech." The Red City certainly lives up to its name: from the red cloth drying on the rooftops,...

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From Marrakech In To the Sahara

THE EMFRY ROAD turns into a track that peters out into desert floor, with holes here and there - mice? snakes? - and even in February the sun is intense. The land stretches out in all directions, shimmering to an uncertain horizon. From out of the heat haze materialises a figure, indistinct as a mirage. The figure takes shape: a young woman, incongruous in jeans and T-shirt, walking out of nothing,...

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