Detailed Review
Amanjena is the first Amanresort on the African continent. This luxury resort rests in a copse of olive trees in Marrakech, offering a quiet sanctuary for guests.
The facilities
The restaurant at the Amanjena features an a la carte Moroccan home-style dishes as well as a selection of international courses. There is also a Thai restaurant at the luxury resort, which is open for all meals and the Pool Terrace offers three meals a day in the summer season, so guests can enjoy cuisine poolside. This luxury resort also boasts a fully stocked bar.
Amanjena houses a library with a wrap-around balcony along with a wide selection of books, magazines, newspapers, board games, CDs and DVDs as well as art supplies for the creative set. This luxury resort also boasts a heated outdoor swimming pool and a health and beauty centre with a hammam and glassed-in whirlpool. Treatments at the beauty centre include massages, manicures, pedicures and facials. The Centre also features a timber-floor gym and Amanjena also houses two tennis courts.
The rooms
Amanjena offers 18 Pavilions and 4 two-storey maisons. Each pavilion includes a bedroom-living room and spacious bathroom and dressing area, all decorated in a traditional Moroccan theme. Each pavilion has a king-size platform bed and an open fireplace. Each comes with a mini-bar, a CD player and a TV/DVD and some have a private heated pool and an extended garden.
The luxury resort’s four two-storey maisons come with a living area, an arc-cut fireplace and a zellij wall fountain. Bathrooms are defined by marble columns, domed shower, toilet rooms and a pillared, green-marble tub. The master bedroom comes with a king-size bed and divan. All of the maisons also offer a private swimming pool, a garden and minzah.
Press Quotes
“Behind high earthen walls, the Amanjena is a pink and palatial world unto itself…the temptation is simply to stay put." The Independent 06
Independent Reviews
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"Stark Moorish film set hotel set some way from the centre of town"
Like all Aman Resorts, this has had a lot of press. Views are mixed - for some the service and indulgences make it unbeatable; others, seeking more authentic Moroccan experiences, feel that it's slightly too much of a Hollywood Arabian Nights fantasy.
Amanjena
By Maureen Barry
If Marrakech has been dubbed the city of sybarites, then Amanjena, flourishing in the Palmeraie oasis on the outskirts of the town, offers the ultimate sybaritic hotel experience, cocooning you in an Arabian Night’s dream which is as far removed from reality as the stories of Sheherazade.
Conceived on an awesome scale, Amanjena’s Moorish film-set architecture has been called ‘stark’ - and it still needs to coax more greenery from the irrigated desert soil. But Aman hotelier Adrian Zecha’s eye is a refined one, he strips away at an artistic tradition and presents a kind of core essence - which you either love or hate - a million miles from the over-kitsch interiors of some of the popular riads.
The dusty pink, high earthen-walled resort is grouped around a central bassin, whose pavilions or maisons jardins either have their own pools or are separated by reflection channels, with the snow-capped High Atlas Mountains adding a stunning theatrical backdrop.
You need never mingle with your fellow guests - your walled pavilion is its own private domain for inside and outside living. Roaring log fires, huge beds and baths, private butlers with unseen cosseting hands are constantly at work, the staff ratio is 6-1. Swathes of deep pink roses (from the nearby Dades valley) are everywhere, with petals strewn in your pool and bath. There’s an 18-hole golf course, gym and beauty centre with Hamman (steam) and Moroccan gommage (clay treatment) and massage with exotic oils. Dine under the stars on your pavilion terrace, or try exquisite Moroccan food in the atmospheric restaurant. The warmth of the ‘Aman family’ hospitality is genuinely seductive and their attention to detail staggering. Hotel keeping at its very best - at an equally staggering price.
Magicians, snake-charmers, fortune-tellers, dancers and all the mystery of the east in the legendary Djemaa el Fna, the maze of the bustling medina, bargain-hunting in the souks, fabulous food at Yacout and Diaffa, excursions to Ouarzazarte and the Berber villages of the High Atlas or to the beach at Essaouira.
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Client Reviews
An oasis of palms and olive trees that offers
Posted by Bejamin Ergas on 2004-07-07.
Soul-less international resort hotel - what a
Ratings
- Comfort:
(5/5) - Character:
(1/5) - Location:
(3/5)
Posted by Charles on 2004-12-08.
The Amanjena and everyone there was an incredible
Posted by Ronnie Sassoon on 2005-04-18.
