La Mamounia's outdoor pool bar is not merely a place to drink — it is one of the great afternoon-into-evening experiences on the African continent. Orange trees. Bougainvillea. The sound of water, birdsong, and ice in crystal. Churchill painted here. You should drink here.
Details
Avenue Bab Jdid, Marrakech
Fri–Sat until 23:00
Editorial Review
La Mamounia's Garden Bar Is a World Unto Itself
There is a particular kind of late afternoon that only exists in luxury hotel gardens in warm countries, and La Mamounia has perfected it. The Lotus Club sits at the edge of the hotel's legendary pool — 45 metres of still, blue water flanked by orange trees planted in the eighteenth century when this was a royal garden gifted to the son of Alaoui sultan Mohammed III. The bougainvillea is theatrical. The light is impossible. The silence, given that you are three minutes from the souk's perpetual roar, is extraordinary.
Winston Churchill painted the gardens at La Mamounia across several visits during the 1940s and 1950s, writing to Franklin Roosevelt that Marrakech was "the most lovely spot in the whole world." The Lotus Club's bar team have taken the property's legendary history seriously: the cocktail menu reads as a celebration of Morocco's agricultural abundance. The Atlas Rose — sparkling rosé from the Meknès valley, Damask rose cordial, fresh lemon — arrives in Champagne flutes with a dried rose petal floating at the surface, and it is genuinely one of the most elegant drinks served anywhere in Africa.
Non-guests can access the pool and Lotus Club through a day-pass arrangement that includes a minimum spend at the bar — the kind of policy that sounds like a barrier until you discover what the minimum buys. A bottle of Bollinger, a plate of mezze, four hours in the most beautiful garden in North Africa. It is, by any measure, a bargain for what it delivers. Reserve poolside seating in advance; the hotel fills its sun loungers quickly in spring and autumn.
What to Order
The Lotus Club Order
The Space
Palace Gardens & Poolside
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