Culture, Craft, and Design Inside the Medina

IZZA Marrakech, a boutique hotel where architecture, contemporary art, and cultural collaboration redefine sustainable hospitality in the heart of  the Medina

The Architecture of Living Well at IZZA Marrakech 

Set across seven restored riads, Izza unfolds like a private interior landscape: rooms lead into courtyards, courtyards open onto terraces, staircases ascend without symmetry. Every space is distinct, yet everything holds together. This isn’t Marrakech as façade, it’s Marrakech with depth, clarity, and control.

Rather than replicating the local, the structure listens to it. The property follows existing forms, not design tropes: lime plaster restored by hand, traditional water systems retained, raw materials used with discipline not flair. Light enters with purpose. Air moves through carved thresholds. The building understands itself.

Each room is named for a figure who once found creative refuge in Marrakech: Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin, Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent, Grace Jones, Marella Agnelli, Cecil Beaton. The references are present, but never theatrical. Influence is expressed through material, palette, and spatial rhythm.

Craftsmanship is foundational: hand-chiseled cedar, woven wool, zellige arranged in quiet asymmetry. Lighting is intentional. Furniture earns its space. Textiles carry weight. Everything is made to be used never styled into submission.

Art and Presence: The Museum in the Medina

Art is not an afterthought here; it informs the building’s very structure. Woven through stairwells, salons, and courtyards, visual works occupy the space as naturally as light and air. A photograph softens a corridor’s angle. Sculptures lean into shadowed alcoves. Hassan Hajjaj’s portrait pulses with color in the hallway, while on the rooftop, Sebastião Salgado’s Amazonia series lends stillness and scale,each image drawn from rainforest reverence and rendered in shadow and silver.

At the center of this visual language is the Museum in the Medina: a living collection of more than 300 contemporary, digital, and NFT artworks assembled by Neon Adventures Ltd. with fellowship.xyz and Studio137. This multi million euro collection comprises Salgado’s iconic series, AI compositions by Refik Anadol, portraits from the Ethiopian collective Yatreda, and works by Moroccan artists such as Khadija Jayi and Mouhcine Rahaoui. It is embedded within the structure itself, ever-present and integral

The artistic dialogue extends through the Associate Artist Program, an ongoing invitation for artists to create site-specific works in direct response to the building. Rooms become temporary ateliers. Public spaces flex to hold new ideas. In October, the next wave of installations will unfold.

IZZA’s cultural momentum also carries upward. Beginning in September, Soul Brunch will turn the rooftop into a monthly gathering. Music and food share space under open sky,unhurried, easy, and grounded in the rhythm of the city.

Rooftop Dining at Noujoum: Moroccan Cuisine with Mediterranean Poise

High above the Medina’s rhythm, Noujoum unfolds as a poised dining space, measured, elegant, and grounded in its surroundings. Its name, meaning stars in Arabic, is a nod to the courtyard geometry below and an indirect salute to Bill Willis, whose grand, decadent restraint is still detectable in the building’s bones.

Open to both hotel guests and outside diners, Noujoum keeps its tone deliberately inward. Tables are set beneath vines and weathered stone. Light shifts slowly across plaster. The menu, created in collaboration with a British consultant chef, leans on seasonal produce and minimal intervention. Crab and leek croquettes arrive without narrative. Charred broccoli in confit garlic holds its own. A tiramisu—lightly dismantled and rebuilt ends the meal in a whisper.

Lunch and dinner are served daily, with a steady rhythm that favors long meals and clear intention. Noujoum doesn’t perform hospitality it practices it.

Next to it, Bill’s Bar trades in a similar grammar. A short list of cocktails—fig, arak, orange blossom, mint—delivered with no performance. Moroccan wines poured with understatement. No branding. No theatrics. Just the suggestion of something very good, placed exactly where it should be.

The Library at IZZA: A Rooftop Room for Readers

Perched quietly on the top floor, the library at IZZA trades square footage for atmosphere. Wrapped in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and framed in carved cedar, it’s a room made for retreat, elevated thought, and the quiet persistence of books.

The collection is eclectic but intentional: Moroccan history, modern theory, rare art books, well-thumbed novels, and just enough obscure titles to keep things interesting. Ladder rails hug the shelves like architectural punctuation. Leather club chairs settle into corners. A tiled fireplace—black and gold, hypnotically geometric—anchors the space without drawing attention to itself.

Above it all, a chandelier fans outward in an improbable bouquet of glass satellites equal parts sculpture and spacecraft.

It isn’t a co-working space or a lounge. It’s a room for people who read or at least want to. And once you’re in it, there’s no reason to leave quickly.

Wellness at IZZA: Spa and Fitness in the Medina

The spa is finished in matte plaster and quiet bronze, with clean geometry and restrained color. The treatments are deliberate: aromatherapy massages, mineral facials, and a traditional hammam sequence that includes black soap exfoliation, ginger oil, scalp massage, and a honey mask. Appointments are private and paced. The air smells of neroli and citrus.

A small gym fitted with Tonal smart equipment and a Peloton treadmill is available around the clock. It’s lightly used, always ready, and quietly present—there when needed, never imposing.

Local partnerships and social infrastructure in the Medina

The hotel shares common ground with the Amal Women’s Training Center, a nonprofit devoted to equipping women with hands-on culinary training, language instruction, and life skills. The program prepares its participants to step into the local food sector with both technical knowledge and personal agency. It’s not charity;it’s infrastructure. And the relationship with IZZA reflects shared values: craft, care, and access to opportunity.

A similar logic shapes IZZA’s collaboration with Pikala, the city’s leading social enterprise for youth mobility and vocational training. Guests can join guided bike tours through the less-mapped quarters of the Medina on Dutch-imported bicycles assembled and maintained by Pikala’s own mechanics. Routes favor history over highlights, connection over sightseeing.

These aren’t side projects. They’re built into how the hotel works, rooted in locality, designed to last.

Benedicta Addoteye