A CENTURY of MOROCCAN STYLE

The legendary La Mamounia in Marrakech unveils a multimillion-dollar renovation on the occasion of its 100th anniversary

- JARED PAUL STERN

This is a wonderful place, and the hotel one of the best I have ever used…. It is the most lovely spot in the whole world.” So said Winston S. Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt about La Mamounia in Marrakech in 1943. He made a practice of taking up residence at the famous five-star hotel every winter, with other famous faces soon following suit. At that time La Mamounia had just celebrated its 20th anniversary, and just last year it turned 100.

These days Churchill is honored by a bar named after him, as well as one of the hotel’s top suites. In 2020, the legendary hotel unveiled the first phases of a multimillion-dollar revamp, which was fully completed in 2023 in time for La Mamounia’s centennial. It had already long been considered by many to be the best hotel in the world, combining “the comfort of the West and the splendor of the East.” And now it’s truly and utterly incomparable.

La Mamounia was conceived in 1923 by architects Henri Prost and Antoine Marchisio on a 37-acre palace and garden complex that Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah gave to his son in the 18th century. Combining Moroccan and Moorish architecture and design with all the luxuries of a Parisian palace hotel, it soon attracted the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Marcello Mastroianni, Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro and the Prince of Wales, along with the international jet set. While it may have come to seem a bit stuffy at one point, Pierre Jochem, the iconic property’s longtime General Manager, points out that part of the inspiration for the revamp was that “our clientele has also changed. They are younger, well-travelled and are connoisseurs.”