What is a riad Morocco
When you travel, how do you decide where to stay? My top three priorities are a good location, a comfortable bed, and a hot shower. After a long day of exploring and adventuring, there’s nothing better than a place nearby where you can take a hot shower and get a good night’s sleep.
It’s not easy to find good places to stay in Morocco. Before making your final choice, you should do some research.
Dear readers, the article you’re about to read will help you decide. We’ll talk about what a riad is and how it’s different from a hotel in Morocco Let’s get started!
What are Riads?
In general, a riad is a building with rooms and common areas arranged around a central courtyard. Obviously, riads have been around for a long time. They have been there for hundreds of years in Morocco.
In the past, almost all of the houses in Moroccan medinas were built with a large courtyard in the middle. This was because of the weather and the way people lived. The house was always a comfortable temperature because it had small windows on the outside and a central courtyard. Moroccans have always been private people who don’t like to brag. They like houses that look simple on the outside but are filled with beautiful things on the inside. The large courtyard in the middle of the building is also a nice place for family activities.
Andalusia is in southern Spain. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll notice that it looks a lot like Morocco in terms of architecture. This is because Andalusia was culturally connected to Morocco for 800 years. Some parts of this style of building look like the much older Roman domus.
“Riad” is Arabic for “garden,” and only the best houses in the medina with beautiful central courtyards were good enough to be called that.
Riads were the large villas of the richest families. They had many rooms, some of which were for servants, and an elaborate courtyard with a garden or at least a large fountain and some plants.
Don’t get me wrong. The other houses in the medina were not small by any means, because they were big enough to fit several generations of the same family. Even now, it’s not unusual to see a newly built house with the top part still unfinished because they’re waiting for a son to get married so they can keep building up.
In the picture below, you can see how few and far between riads are in a medina.
By its current definition, a “riad” is any house in the medina with a central courtyard that welcomes travelers, no matter how big or beautiful the courtyard is.
So, there are two types of riads: 1) the two-story type with 5 to 8 rooms, and 2) the traditional, authentic riads, which are usually 3 to 4 stories tall and have more than 10 rooms, but usually not more than 20. Both types of riads are made for travelers to stay in. So that people don’t get confused with what the word traditionally means, the first type is sometimes called “dar,” which just means “home” in Arabic.
Both types are amazing things to do. When you walk through the unassuming door, the interior design will blow you away. The traditional riads are nicer, but the dars are cozier. I can’t even choose between the two. They are both great.
Since there isn’t much room in a medina, most riads don’t have big, open lobbies. Think of it as a small hotel with a small lobby, rooms with private bathrooms, a cozy common area, breakfast included, etc.
A lot of the time, the atmosphere and service make you feel like you’re staying at the home of a wealthy friend or relative. Most of the time, they are run by Europeans who fell in love with Moroccan culture and bought a house to turn into a guesthouse. So, they try hard to keep the decor true to the local culture, but the service has a touch of Western culture that people are used to.
When it comes to riad decor, there are two schools: Traditionalist, which is very ornate and complicated, and Modern Traditionalist, which has one foot in tradition (white plaster walls and carved wood as a base) and the other firmly planted in the minimalist approach. Morocco Tours 8 days
Riads are different in each city because the weather is different in each one. Marrakech is dry and hot, so most of the walls will be covered with stucco and there will probably be a pool in the courtyard. In the north, where it is more humid and cool, most walls are made of tiles, and the courtyard is a place for guests to walk through or just sit and relax.
Here is a collection of photos of riads in Morocco. Try to figure out which ones are in dry climates and which ones are in humid climates, as well as which ones are converted medina houses and which ones are authentic riads from the past:
How a Hotel Stay in Morocco Was
Hotels in Morocco, like hotels in many other places, are rated from 1 to 5 stars. In reality, though, it causes a lot of confusion. For example, a 4-star hotel in Marrakesh is not as nice as one in Paris or New York, even though they all have the same number of stars.
From what I’ve seen, the best way to rank a hotel in Morocco is by how old it is. Hotels are usually run by a board of investors, while riads are usually run by the people who live there. So, they usually start out great, but if they don’t get the care they need, they lose their shine over time.
For example, hotels built in the 1980s still have a lot of dark floral patterns and brown and red colors.
In the past few years, some international hotel chains have been building new hotels and buying old ones to fix up. The decoration is very different, with some modern elements added to the traditional Arabic rootstock. For example, carpet is still the most common type of flooring, just like it is in most Moroccan homes and mosques, but the layout of the new hotels is based on simple geometric shapes.
So, hotels are better than riads because they are bigger, with bigger lobby areas and other common areas. For the same reason, though, it’s impossible to build a hotel inside a medina, so riads are almost always a better choice.
As we did with the riads, here is a gallery of traditional Moroccan hotels as well as hotels that are new or have been recently renovated. Try to figure out which is which: Casablanca desert tours
Kasbahs are another type of place to stay.
This article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning kasbahs, which are another type of place to stay in Morocco, especially near the Sahara.
As with the riads, we need to make sure we don’t mix up the historically accurate kasbahs of southern Morocco. These were places where wealthy families stayed and where trade routes met.
There are a few historical kasbahs that have been turned into guesthouses and are available to travelers as places to stay. Most of them, though, are brand new and have rooms and common areas set up around a central courtyard, which is an idea that was clearly taken from riads. Viaje a Marrakech
Traditionally, kasbahs’ adobe walls are made of straw and soil from the area. So, it looks like the walls are growing right out of the ground.
Check out this gallery of kasbahs, some of which are new and some of which are old:
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