The first episode of our monthly journal of the works at Dar Estran, in Marrakech: what we found behind door 80, and how two old riads are becoming one house.
On Saturday 3 January 2026, a little after one in the afternoon, we walked down Derb Snan for the first time. It is a quiet impasse in Dar el Bacha, in the medina, and the way in is, as one of us says on the video from that day, a bit of a maze. The house is at the very end. In January it had three doors onto the derb. We went in by the second.
It was still furnished, down to the bedspreads. We started with the patio: a long basin edged with pale paving, an arcade covered in vine, its benches, a palm. Under all of it, there were birds; you can hear them on the very first video. You can also hear one of us saying that obviously everything would have to be redone, but that there was a great deal of potential. (The words were not quite "a great deal". This is a family magazine.)
These days, the door we walk to is the heavy studded one at the end of the derb, with a knocker and the number 80 above it. The two riads had a number each, 79 and 80. Behind door 80 is Dar Estran, the house we are making out of those two riads.
What we found in January
We say "the riad", but it is in fact two riads, side by side: a big one and a small one. In January they were already joined, by a single door between them. The small riad could have lived on its own. It had its own door onto the derb, a little brick patio, a salon with a fireplace, a small kitchen by the stairs and three bedrooms that were much of a muchness.
The big riad was arranged around the long basin of the main patio. Upstairs, the bedrooms still had their old décor: red calligraphy on a wall, a pink striped bedspread, peach curtains and a yellow bathroom in one; vintage posters in another.
Above it all were two roof terraces, separated by a wall: low pink walls, palms, deckchairs, a pergola with yellow chairs, bougainvillea under the awnings. From one, with a little hop, you could get onto the other. And beyond them, the palace next door.
Why this house
That first time, we fell in love with the roof. It is probably up there that we all saw, as a family, that this had to be our next Maison Estran house.
The other reason is something you cannot see. Stay in the heart of the medina and you will probably wake up to motorbikes. Here, in the very middle of it, you cannot hear any traffic at all, only birds, all day long, because we are at the end of the street, with the gardens of the royal palace on the other side of the wall. I do not think I will ever tire of looking across its gardens.
My father, Carl, puts it better. "What I liked when I came here with Lola and Sophie," he says, "was the sense of calm, and the greenery, which you rarely find in Marrakech. To be lucky enough to be right on the gardens of the Bacha palace like this is something very rare." He said it in September, in the middle of the works. He did mention the jackhammer.
One house, not two
In fairness, the house was in good condition. We decided to rework it anyway: to open rooms up, redistribute the spaces and create a new bedroom. Joining the two riads was, for once, the simple part. There was already a door between them, so all we had to do was knock down the wall that separated them. On the roof, the wall between the two terraces has gone too.
Downstairs, the big riad's dining room and the small riad's living room have become one space, separated only by a new fireplace, still raw concrete in September. In winter there will be a fire, because Marrakech, as I said on one of the videos, is a hot-sun but cold-night country.
The old dining room had four glazed bays; we have made them into two large openings, to let more light through. In August the big room was bare concrete and rubble sacks, with a gaping hole onto the patio; by September there were new concrete pillars and a beam. The team worked through the summer, in what I have since described as fifty-degree heat, at a mad pace.
The most radical change is the old kitchen, a large room on the patio floor with its own door onto the street. It is becoming the only bedroom on the patio floor, with its own bathroom, a view over the pool and direct access to it. We chose to close off the street door and insulate it properly, so that it would be a truly quiet room: step outside and you should hear nothing but the pool and the birds.
That leaves one kitchen downstairs, in the small riad. An old laundry room (more or less) is becoming the new bedroom's bathroom, with a big Italian-style shower against a wall of zellige the colour of bougainvillea, which you will see from the patio through a window.
Elsewhere in the house there will be a massage room and a traditional hammam. We genuinely wondered whether we needed one here. I am thrilled that we decided we did.
On the roof
The roof is what we fell for, and it has not been left alone. Up there was an outdoor kitchen with, oddly, nowhere to cook. It is being rebuilt, roof and all, as a proper summer kitchen, for the team, because we really want them to feel at ease when they cook for our guests.
The small jacuzzi has grown. "It was a little jacuzzi," as someone on the roof put it in September. "Now it's a real pool." At one point the team had forgotten to build a step inside it; a step has since been added, so you will be able to get in. Its zellige, the same as the summer kitchen's, had not arrived in September.
There are new masonry benches for a dining area, so new in September that they were still damp, and one very large bench where you can spend the whole afternoon, facing the palace gardens and the sunset. We are keeping the metal pergola and training white bougainvillea over it for shade. Underfoot there will be bejmat, a traditional tile made of natural earth. And the air-conditioning units will be hidden, which, I promise you, was one of the main discussions of the day.
Two patios
The main patio, in the big riad, has the pool: quite a big one, empty in September, its black tiles showing, with orange trees, a zellige fountain framed by two palms, white columns and horseshoe arches around it. The new bedroom opens onto it. The beauty of this riad is that the light changes every hour.
The small patio is the one I love. It is cosy, it feels like a home, and it will probably be where we welcome guests, with a glass of Moroccan mint tea when they arrive. The small riad's three bedrooms, all to be entirely redone, each with its own bathroom, might be the best in the house to sleep in, because you get some privacy. The two smallest will make a sort of suite, with a heavy curtain between them, because we really want people to be able to come here as a family and feel at ease.
Altogether that makes eight bedrooms: three in the small riad, four on the bedroom floor of the big one, and the new one off the main patio. They can be booked one at a time or all together, and we have arranged the living spaces so that the house works both ways.
Where we are
In September I came back after a few weeks away; we had followed everything on video. Things had moved on a great deal. My mother, Sophie, and my father were there too.
We are not doing this alone, which is just as well. Amine has looked after the house for twenty years, knows it better than anyone and checks everything while we are away, which during a renovation is an enormous help. Mohammed, our maître d'œuvre, is in charge of all the workers on site.
On 18 September the whole day was about electricity. Plumbing was the next step, and the painters were due the following week. The four bedrooms of the big riad had not even been started, nor the two smallest in the small riad. On another video I can be heard saying, "I can't remember exactly why I got myself into that. But then again, it's very exciting."
This episode stops in September, and a great deal still has to happen before the opening: the bedrooms, the paint, the zellige on the pool, the bejmat on the roof. Dar Estran opens at the end of 2026, and bookings will open soon. If you would like to hear first, you can join the list on the Dar Estran page.
Between episodes, the works are also on our Instagram, in a series of the same name, Becoming Dar Estran, with the sound on.
Next month, in Ep. 02: the colour of a bougainvillea, and how you match a wall to it.
Lola
The house
Dar Estran, Dar el Bacha, Marrakech. Eight bedrooms around two patios, opening at the end of 2026. Be the first to know.
