What is the Palmeraie in Marrakech?

The Palmeraie is Marrakech's green escape — a sprawling historic palm grove on the city's northeastern edge, said to have tens of thousands of date palms planted over centuries. Today it's the address for a particular kind of stay: walled villas, low-rise luxury resorts, boutique hotels, and golf estates, all set among the palms with space that's simply impossible inside the medina. When travellers tell me they want gardens, a big pool, total quiet, and room to breathe, the Palmeraie is usually where I point them.

Staying out here feels less like being in Marrakech and more like having a private retreat near it. Many of the resorts are destinations in themselves — spas, sprawling grounds, several restaurants, sometimes a hammam and a kids' club — and you could happily spend a whole day without leaving. I've placed honeymooners and families here who wanted the trip to centre on rest, with day trips into the city as the occasional outing rather than the main event. It's also blissfully cool and shaded compared to the baking medina, which matters in high summer.

The catch, and I'm always upfront about it, is distance. The Palmeraie is a fifteen- to twenty-five-minute drive from Jemaa el-Fnaa depending on traffic and exactly where your villa sits, and there's nothing walkable around most properties — no medina lanes, no café you can stroll to, no souk around the corner. You'll be reliant on taxis or, better, an arranged driver for every outing, and those fares and the time add up over a few days.

So I think of the Palmeraie as a choice about what kind of holiday you want. If Marrakech is mainly a backdrop to relaxation — pool, spa, palms, long lazy lunches — it's wonderful. If you want to be immersed in the city, wandering out your door into the thick of it, the Palmeraie will feel isolating and you'll spend a lot of the trip in a car. For many travellers the sweet spot is a split: a few nights in a medina riad for the immersion, then a few in the Palmeraie to decompress before flying home.