Royal Mansour Marrakech

Marrakech already had a medina when Royal Mansour gave it a second in 2010, five minutes' drive from Jemaa el-Fna. It was built for King Mohammed VI, to designs by OMBI: five walled hectares of narrow alleys between ochre walls, with palms leaning over them and 53 riads opening off them. Each riad is a house of up to three floors round a courtyard, with a plunge pool and a roof terrace looking over the old city or out to the High Atlas, and maâlems, Morocco's master craftsmen, laid its zellige and carved its plaster. The 500 or so staff keep off the alleys, moving round the estate in tunnels underneath, so a butler arrives at the door without having been seen on the way, a service the old medina has never offered.

Recommended for anyone who wants Marrakech's craftsmanship at its most finished and the real medina a short drive off, and for families: Le Jardin de Lila, the kids club, takes four- to ten-year-olds on treasure hunts through the hotel's own medina and gives them their first words of Arabic. Then there is Le Jardin's pool, 30 metres by 20 among palms and olive trees, and the spa, 2,500 square metres behind an atrium of white iron latticework, where the hammam is the treatment to book and a second pool is heated under an orangery roof. Jardin Majorelle and the Bahia Palace are each about two kilometres away by car. Dinner is La Grande Table Marocaine, where a team led by Hélène Darroze reworks old Moroccan court and home recipes each season, so a medina built in 2010 sits down to dinners a good deal older than itself.