Carved from a seventeenth-century palace deep within the Fes el-Bali medina, one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban centres on earth, Riad Fes presents a particular design challenge: how to install contemporary comfort inside a structure whose architectural language was fixed centuries before the concept of a hotel existed. The answer, delivered through a restoration overseen with close attention to traditional Moroccan craft, was to treat the building's existing ornament as the primary design material. The central courtyard shown in the images makes this approach vivid — horseshoe arches rise on slender columns, every surface above the dado line dissolving into stucco arabesque worked by master artisans whose techniques derive from the same Fassi guild tradition that built the Bou Inania madrasa nearby. The 30 rooms and suites layer hand-knotted Berber kilims over zellige tile floors, carved cedar ceilings above gilt-framed mirrors, and silk brocade curtains pooling beside arched windows fitted with mashrabiya screens — an accumulation that feels inhabited rather than staged. The dining room takes a different register entirely: deep crimson walls, dark timber panelling, a zellij-surround fireplace crowned by a Baroque gilded mirror, and a long banquette in olive velvet that pulls the space into something closer to a Parisian grand salon than a traditional Moroccan interior. An outdoor pool court, clad in warm timber decking and framed by rough-cut stone walls softened with climbing greenery, provides relief from the medina's sensory density without abandoning the riad's fundamentally inward, contemplative character.

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