Majorelle Gardens: a Moroccan passion

The Jardin Majorelle was the creation of a French artist, Jacques Majorelle, who settled in Marrakech during the First World War. Majorelle acquired a 9 acre property of palm groves just outside of the city, and set about creating a botanical garden.

 With a painter's eye he designed it around walls, fountains and pots in bold primary blue and yellow ...

... its dominant feature this intense cobalt  blue which Jacques Majorelle developed and patented as Majorelle Blue

Majorelle lived and painted here, while opening his garden to the public ... 

which is how French coutourier Yves St Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé discovered it.

In his beautiful book Une Passion Marocaine, which I bought in the garden's bookshop, Pierre Bergé describes how he and Yves fell in love with Marrakech from the moment of their first visit there in 1966, which ended with them flying back to France with the signed deeds to their first property, the Dar (villa) El Hanch.

Image source: amazon, where the book is available

The book is  a treat - an intimate memoir of their years part-living in Morocco, hand-written by Bergé and illustrated with his personal photos of a young and very beautiful Yves and their circle of friends there, and Yves' drawings and paintings ...

Collage of images from Une Passion Marocaine by Pierre Bergé

Maybe partly because it reminded him of his birthplace in North Africa (he was born in Algeria), Morocco came to be a huge source of inspiration to St Laurent, who attributed its influence to his most beautiful collections. 

He and Bergé were frequent visitors to the Majorelle garden, and witnessed its gradual decline and neglect in the years following Jacques Majorelle's death. When they heard of plans to sell it to a property developer who intended to destroy the garden to build a large hotel, they embarked on the seemingly impossible - halting the scheme and becoming owners of the Majorelle garden.

The couple moved in to the Villa Oasis, Majorelle's villa adjacent to the gardens and set about restoring it to his original vision, redonner vie ...

Image source, from Une Passion Marocaine
Pierre Bergé describes this photo as having particular meaning for him as the only existing photo of himself and YSL together in the Majorelle Gardens

Yves in the Jardin Majorelle. Did he choose the colour of that jacket deliberately, I wonder, to contrast with the Majorelle blue?
Image source

Visually, the garden is unique ... the intense Majorelle blue and splashes of bright bougainvillea stand out against a lush background of multiple shades of green: the garden is planted with hundreds of species of palms, aloes, succulents - all plants that thrive in Marrakech's arid desert climate ...

Water features everywhere in the garden give it the feel of a cool oasis

The café in a shaded courtyard has more muted colours ...

... but it was that intense blue that I kept being drawn to ...

Majorelle's blue was inspired originally by his love of the colour of Moroccan tiles, windows and Berber clothing.

It has an intensity that might seem garish in grey northern climates but is stunning in sun-saturated North Africa ...

The artist's original studio was transformed by St Laurent and Bergé into a museum of Berber art and clothing

Yves loved this place so much that after his death in 2008, his ashes were scattered here -
 in the rose garden of the Villa Oasis  where the couple had lived - and Pierre had this simple memorial erected, tucked away in a secluded corner of the garden.

The Roman column was brought from their house in Tangier and mounted on stone painted in Moroccan ochre

Bergé has since donated the garden to the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves St Laurent, a public institution that now looks after it.

For better photos than mine (and taken minus the crowds of tourists that flock here!), see Jeffrey Bale's post here

Come to the kasbah: ruins and palaces

This way to the kasbah ...

Bab Agnaou is one of the nineteen ancient gates of Marrakech. It leads to the royal kasbah, where you will find El Badi Palace.

Translating as "the incomparable palace", El Badi was just that when it was built in the 16th century by a Sultan of Morocco, Ahmad al-Mansur. Today it's a vast and atmospheric ruin.

 

Walking around, you're struck first by the massive scale of it, and then your mind boggles as you try to imagine its original richness and opulence …

360 rooms decorated in Italian marble, Sudanese gold, ivory, onyx, semi-precious stones and intricately-carved cedar wood ...

... a central hall flanked by fifty huge columns, a 90 metre long pool and four smaller pools surrounded by sunken orange gardens and fountains

Its scale and opulence was so overwhelming that it took 25 years to construct … and only a century later, a full 12 years to destroy: not by enemies, but by a later sultan, who systematically stripped El Badi of all its precious materials, to create his own palace elsewhere ...

leaving behind a great ochre ruin of centuries old sandstone walls ... a palace where storks have taken up home ...

and stand guard on the ramparts

They say that El Badi was built with the already long-existing Alhambra (in Granada, Spain) in mind, though you have to imagine this. But at Bahia Palace, a short distance away, the comparison with the Alhambra (see here for an earlier post) becomes obvious ...

The Bahia is a newer and better preserved 19th century palace and gardens in the medina along the edge of Mellah, the Jewish Quarter ...

Built as a home for the Sultan's personal harem ...

... it has a series of walled gardens and courtyards with fountains, planted with orange, cypress, jasmine and banana trees.

A central tiled courtyard here is surrounded by a series of rooms, the size of each said to have depended on the importance or favour of each concubine

Craftsmen were brought from Fez to work on the details … arches, carved and painted ceilings, intricate stucco plasterwork and patterned tile mosaics. A seamless interplay of gardens, light and water make up the balance of this fabulous Arab-Andalusian architecture.

Elizabeth Wix, who is lucky enough to have lived in Marrakech once, pointed us in the direction of these amazing palaces and much more besides - thank you, Elizabeth! - and reminded me that the Bahia was the setting in the remake of Brideshead Revisited where Charles Ryder goes to find a sick Sebastian Flyte. Do see her blog The House in Marrakesh and her wonderful posts on the Bahia here.

Souk adventures

From our riyad we ventured out by day to the souks of the Medina ...

... where a map turns out to be pointless. This ancient part of the city is a winding sprawl of narrow alleys and roads ... to a foreigner's eye, each one almost identical to the next .

Getting hopelessly lost is inevitable, and part of the fun

... though there is never a shortage of willing guides to help you find your way if you so much as hesitate ...

and almost certainly in this case there will be a detour via their cousin's/brother's/brother-in-law's/father's/uncle's jewellery, silver, carpet or slipper stall ...

... where, they assure you, the produce is the best quality and value in the whole of Marrakech!

My favourites were the souks devoted entirely to babouches (above), the colourful soft suede and leather slippers worn indoors (of which I bought several pairs to keep at the front door at home) ... and the carpet souks ...

rich colours woven by Berber women in intricate patterns, no two alike ...

In  this cosy stall below, tightly packed wall-to-wall with carpets, we sat drinking mint tea and chatting with the owner, tucked away from the bustle and noise of the market, unhurriedly discussing life and the world in between admiring his stock  ...

Another day an impromptu guide appeared in the form of a young man I began chatting to, who offered to take us (with a detour to his brother's babouche stall, of course) to the wool-dyers' souk, where he had worked as a young boy and where many of his family still worked ...
Wool and silk are dyed here in huge vats and then strung up to dry in the sun ...

We were shown how dyes are mixed ...

to get the incredibly vivid colours of the finished products ...

like this ruby red scarf that was wrapped around Younger Daughter - a quick lesson in traditional Berber headdress ...

How fabulous does she look? ... just one of many souk adventures, including being draped with a cobra while a monkey stole her sunglasses, befriending market sellers and having her hands hennaed ...

Guided up to the rooftop of the wool-dyers' souk on a rickety iron staircase, our new friend showed us the fantastic views across the desert to the Atlas mountains capped with snow, the light always crisp and clear, the sky vivid blue.

Walking in the streets and market places of Marrakech is a constant assault on the senses ... sounds of trade and bargaining, muezzins calling and traditional music mix with the smells of street food, animals, pungent smoke, fruit ... 

spices, incense, fragrances ...

clockwise from top left: herbs, incense, cinnamon sticks and rose petals in colourful fabric bags

and vibrant colour, colour, colour everywhere ...

Here in the Quartier Juif, Marrakechs's ancient community of Maghrebi (North African) Jews is diminished in numbers, many having migrated to Israel and France, but the covered market here remains a foodie's paradise ...

heaped mountains of saffron, cinnamon, pepper, cumin, paprika, turmeric

star anise next to root ginger and coffee beans, filling huge canisters or bags

The quantity, variety and visual displays are just extraordinary ...

Back home and inspired, I am currently obsessed with Yotam Ottolenghi's versions of Moroccan feasts (click on the link for fantastic recipes) that take me back to the magic of the Medina.