A short walk from the Kasbah in Tangier, Villa Mabrouka sits at the top of a clifftop garden that falls in terraces towards the Strait of Gibraltar. On a clear day the water fills the end of every path.
It began as a modernist house in the 1940s. In the late 1990s it became a home of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, with interiors by Jacques Grange and a garden by Madison Cox.
Jasper Conran bought the house in 2019 and spent four years turning it into a hotel of just twelve rooms. White walls and white sofas stay calm and cool, and the colour arrives in small, considered doses: velvet slipper chairs made locally, Mauritanian rugs, bejmat and zellige underfoot.
Inside, there is the feeling of a private house whose owners have only just stepped out. Mirrors catch the light from tall windows, and the dark woodwork gives the pale rooms an outline.
Outside, more than 6,500 plants have been added: banana palms and ferns, bamboo and citrus, roses, agapanthus and great falls of bougainvillea. One pool is cut into the rock, and a smaller one is lined in green herringbone tile.
It is a garden for walking in slowly, late in the day, when the shadows of the palms lengthen across the white walls. We think of it whenever we look at Palm Shadows.
All photography via Villa Mabrouka
