P’tit Habibi

The one that feels like staying at a very stylish friend’s house — if that friend happened to have an obsessive eye for craft and a genuine disregard for interior design convention. Tucked into the northern medina near Bab Lakhmis, P’tit Habibi is five rooms of conscious eclecticism: two suites and three doubles, each individually designed to fuse traditional Moroccan artisanship with cutting-edge aesthetics, none of it repeating itself. The Hazy Moon suite commands its own private rooftop terrace with Atlas Mountain views beneath a 5.5-metre hand-carved plaster ceiling; the Wangarata is detailed entirely in graphic black and white with a king-size zellige bed and a fireplace; the Peruche is the smallest room in the house and compensates with the most dramatic vaulted bathroom and a riot of pink, aubergine, and bird motifs. 

Shared spaces — the bibliothèque, the lounge, the courtyard — are communal in the best sense, with breakfast served around a single table and dinners that can be arranged in the open-air courtyard with the chef cooking traditional tagines and kofta to order. The rooftop splash pool and shaded terrace are where the evenings go to disappear. At the northern end of the medina, away from the tourist crowd, it is the sort of place that earns ferocious loyalty from everyone who finds it.