Four days in the red city.

Photography — Alfred Lindgren Words — Alfred Lindgren April 2026

The first rule of Marrakesh is that nothing happens at the time it’s scheduled. You learn this on day one, and by day four you prefer it that way. The city is a suggestion of a city — the riads, the rooftops, the ochre walls at dusk — and the trip is better for going with it.

We flew in on a Thursday afternoon and were met at the airport by a driver from the riad — a small, quiet man in a white djellaba who said almost nothing for the thirty minutes it took to reach the medina. The apartment we’d booked was two interconnected riads just off Rue Mouassine. Two courtyards, one long plunge pool, a roof terrace with a view of the Koutoubia. Eight of us, all in.

Dinner was at Le Comptoir — still, after twenty years, the right first-night restaurant in the city. Low lighting, a ten-course tasting, a belly dancer on a slow rotation around the room. It is exactly as theatrical as you remember it, and that is the point. You arrive in Marrakesh, you go to Le Comptoir, and the weekend begins.

The day at Agafay.

On the Friday we went out to the Agafay desert — forty minutes from the city, a stone desert rather than a sand one, dry and pale and endless. Inara Camp for lunch and the pool. A long table under the eucalyptus, a bottle of rosé every hour, camels crossing the horizon at the exact moment you’d ask a film director to put them there.

This is what Marrakesh does. It choreographs itself. You plan the spine, you leave room, and the city fills it with the right things.

“You plan the spine, you leave room, and the city fills it with the right things.”

The pace, in three parts.

Mornings start at the riad, slowly. Breakfast in the courtyard — msemen, amlou, mint tea, eggs. No phones at the table, an informal rule that held up for most of the weekend.

Afternoons belong to the pool. The souks are a mistake in the heat — go in the late afternoon or not at all. Les Bains de Marrakech for a hammam on day two; everyone emerges softer and slower than they arrived.

Evenings are the city’s best hours. Rooftops at El Fenn or Nobu. Dinner moving later each night. A last drink at Kabana, the red light bleeding across the Koutoubia through the terrace arches.

The last dinner.

El Fenn on the Sunday. The rooftop is the only place in Marrakesh where the light does the entire job for you — pink walls, green tile, a pool the colour of a Matisse. We ate slowly. Nobody suggested a plan for after. The crew we came with left the city already thinking about the next trip.

That is the measure of a good weekend: not what you did, but whether you want to go back. We are already talking about October.

— Alfred Lindgren
Founder, Nōch