Eight days of line,
earth and wind.
Marrakech to the Atlantic with twelve people, built around the three ways this country makes a building.
Quoted per group. Rooms, host and private hours vary.
Twelve places. The private list hears first.
April is the month both halves of Morocco are visible at once — snow still on Toubkal, the Marrakech gardens at their peak, and the heat still four weeks away.
Ramadan ends on 9 March, so the workshops keep full hours again. Over eight days a small group moves from a medina that grew to a medina that was drawn, with two nights in the mountains in between — three bases, never more than twelve people, and an afternoon in each place with nothing in it.
You will sit at a bench with a hammer and cut zellij the way the medersa was made. You will learn why a rammed-earth wall does not crack.
Marrakech
line & pattern
Three nights inside the medina walls at the foot of the Koutoubia. The gardens at eight in the morning before anyone else is in them, and the Saadian medersa that spent four years closed for restoration.
Base — Villa des Orangers, inside the walls
The High Atlas
earth & altitude
Fifty kilometres south to Asni, a thousand metres above the city. Two nights facing Toubkal, a morning walking a village with somebody who grew up in it, and the one building lesson that explains every wall on the drive down.
Base — Kasbah Tamadot, Asni valley
Essaouira
wind & wood
West to the Atlantic and the only medina in Morocco that was drawn before it was built — laid out in 1760 by a French engineer and a Moroccan architect, for merchants. Thuya marquetry under the ramparts.
Base — a riad on the ramparts, two nights
April, and not May: the snow line is still visible from the valley and the gardens have not gone over. By June the same walk is done before nine.
Twelve travellers, which is what the zellij atelier can take with everyone at a bench.
Three bases in eight days, and one open afternoon in each. They are left free on purpose.
Tell us who is travelling, and we will write back.
Price on enquiry. Every week is quoted for the group that takes it — rooms, the host, and how much of it is private. We answer within two working days, by letter or by telephone.