The travel editor’s tip: Try a hammam at the Royal Mansour Marrakech
What are the not-to-be-missed experiences that every intrepid adventurer should try at least once? Ask PORTER’s Travel Director CATHERINE FAIRWEATHER, who has been traversing the globe for decades and knows exactly where to go and what to do there. In Marrakech, the home of the hammam, she’s found the very best…
The lowdown
Hammam is at the heart of the culture of Marrakech; a weekly, shared ritual and a time for gossip as well as purifying (think vigorous scrubs, mineral-clay body masks and steam). Most hotels and riads in the city offer their own version, from the basic and communal to the ultra-luxe and private. However, the Royal Mansour Marrakech – the hotel palace commissioned by the King of Morocco – has the spa of all spas: a celestial, white-marbled, light-filled space, with a soaring domed ceiling carved in plasterwork that is made to look like lace. It is the antithesis of other darker, boudoir-style hotel spas in the city, with its own bright café and swimming pool, and is open to day clients as well as hotel guests. The most authentic Moroccan experience here is the hammam ritual; enjoy it in a private suite alone or as a couple.
The ritual
In the lofty, pillared inner sanctum, you strip and lie on the heated marble slab, giving yourself up to the strong arms of Luna, the masseuse, who cradles your neck like a baby’s while scrubbing you with buttery black soap. It’s a strange, regressive experience being naked in the arms of a stranger (politely distant though she remains throughout). But once you have overcome your Western sense of reserve, the act of letting go in itself is intoxicating, as much as this hour, which combines spiritual and aesthetic pleasure, is relaxing. As the room builds up a steam, Luna sluices you with buckets of tepid water before exfoliating with a body mitt. Your dead skin will fall away in alarming amounts, after which you are hosed down and shampooed, and dunked in a pool of cool water. Then you are finally wrapped in a towel, rehydrated with mint tea and left to drift off and dream.