The story of our Moroccan riad began some twenty years ago, when we, Sylvie and Jean-Louis Limongi, fell under the spell of the fabulous country of Morocco, and the passion and enthusiasm that emanates from it and its people. Then it was love at first sight. It was love at first sight for a building rooted in the buzzing medina. This building would become our family home. Two decades later, with a furious desire to rekindle its flame, we decided to give it the freshness and color that make it the verdant Eden it is today. Yes, verdant. Like an oasis emerging in the middle of the Marrackchi souk. Verdant thanks to its lush garden - oh privilege! - accessed from the house via a secret corridor. Coconut palms, washingtonias, fruit trees and other climbing plants reign supreme. Shades, fragrances... and silence. A silence you can enjoy in the shelter of a pergola, near the waterhole or stretched out in a hammock (the art of the siesta is also practiced here). A silence that, while surprising and soothing, lets in a few snippets of the bustling life that plays out here, behind the city ramparts of Bab Doukkala. A genuine, authentic, lively Moroccan neighborhood. A district where the Morocco of yesterday rubs shoulders with the Morocco of today, where people still bake their bread in the communal oven, rush to the hammam or haggle in the souk's shopping streets.
And when night falls on Marrakech, when the Medina falls asleep in the dark, the Dar Amanza oasis is dressed in warm, subdued lights. These lights emanate from the forty or so lamps forged especially for the occasion by the talented Mohammed, a lamp-maker from the place of the Ferblantiers. No, the Thousand and One Nights are not a fairy tale. They're a reality experienced at the heart of the Dar Amanza Moroccan riad.
