For the place
L'Heure Bleue Palais
Essaouira · Morocco
Essaouira turns its face to the wind. The old port sits behind Portuguese ramparts on the Moroccan Atlantic, all whitewash and cobalt shutters, the trade winds combing the beach below. L'Heure Bleue Palais holds the grand address inside those walls, a townhouse from the last century done out in dark wood, worn leather and marble, closer to a colonial club than to the riads around it. Thirty-three rooms and suites climb around a courtyard. Take the lift to the roof and the whole medina opens up, flat white terraces running down to the harbour, a pool set at the very edge. The hotel is named for the hour when the light turns blue over the town, and it earns the name.
Two kitchens carry the place. The Salon Anglais is the formal room, low and clubby, where chef Ahmed Handour cooks Moroccan flavours with a French hand. Through the warm months SAMA takes the roof, plates eaten with the ramparts in view. Breakfast is worth getting up for, and if you want to carry some of it home there are cooking courses in the house. The food is taken seriously here without being made a performance of.
Essaouira is one of the Atlantic's great walled towns, a UNESCO medina that Orson Welles used for his Othello and that the Gnaoua festival fills every June. L'Heure Bleue owns the best perch in it. The building has real history in its bones, the service carries the Relais & Châteaux stamp, and the roof gives you the town, the port and the ocean in a single sweep. It is a large house by medina standards, and busy in season, so ask for a room off the courtyard and keep the roof for the blue hour.
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