About Riad Maizie

Relax and Create: Yoga and Painting at Riad Maizie

Dan's watercolour of Place Foucauld

Now that I’m a fully qualified yoga instructor I thought it would be great fun to do a couple of week’s teaching at Riad Maizie. Then Dan got very excited about the idea and said he would love to teach painting. He has always been a brilliant teacher – Alistair, a vet whom he taught for a bit in Spain was inspired by the experience to do an Art History degree.

We are offering two separate weeks: Monday 19th April to Sunday 25th April 2010, and again Monday 26th to Sunday 2nd May, based around one hour of yoga each morning, three hours of painting each afternoon, followed by another hour of yoga in the evening.

The Rich Pattern of Life

This article was published in the London Evening Standard Homes and Property section on the 9^th of April 2003:

I did not mean to buy a palace. I was on a routine shopping trip in Marrakech's medina with writer Maggie Perry when we passed the estate agent from which she bought her town house, or riad. I suggested we might just have a look.

Things to Do

We can arrange trips to the Ourika Valley, Essouira, and local markets. The more adventurous can take a day or two and go to the desert, or skiing in winter.

There are quite a few museums, as every guide book can tell you, you can swim in close by hotel for the price of a salad, or you can take a caleche and visit Yves St Laurent’s magical garden.

For the discerning, Marrakech has the best and most diverting shopping, but you do have to sift the gems from the dross. For those of you with an interest in Moroccan cuisine we can arrange cookery lessons with the girls.

People who want nothing more than to veg out can hire a masseuse to ease away workaday cares and stress. For serious workaholices there is a wifi connection in the riad and you are welcome to use the laptop to email or Skype.

Dining at Riad Maizie

Amal and Neza, the girls who work at the riad full-time, are excellent cooks, and whatever else you do, you should eat dinner at least once in the riad, either in the dining room or on the roof. It will probably be the best food you have in Marrakech.

The Decor

The house is decorated in traditional style, with an amazing opulence of surface decoration and colour. There must be a kilometre of Gibb’s Frieze, surrounding every door and window and running at dado height around the walls.

The courtyard is paved with cut and patterned terra cotta tiles, and the pillars of the verandah and three of the four fountains are clad in Zillig Fessi – a mosaic of tiny glazed pieces, cut with hammer and chisel from 6” square coloured tiles made in Fez.

Several of the ceilings are beautifully painted, also the huge double doors and much of the furniture, and some of the doors are carved and coloured in the Berber style.

The windows are discreetly veiled by the original lacelike wrought iron panels, conferring invisibility on those within.