It’s a rare thing in Marrakech to find an old home with a large, mature garden that’s a five-minute drive from the medina. Wide, shaded lawns, multiple terraces, 150-year-old olive and pistachio trees: if it has all that, chances are to get to it you’re looking at a bit of a slog out into the 54 square miles of the Palmeraie, the oasis planted by the Almoravid dynasty in the 11th century.
But at Jnane Rumi, an 11-bedroom estate owned by Dutch art lawyer Gert-Jan van den Bergh and his wife, Corinne, this situation – arcadian Maghrebi bliss, a mere hop away from the souk action – is a happy reality. Architectural cachet is another, as is the property’s exceptional collection of north African art, showcasing the region’s most promising talents and storytellers. Jnane Rumi can be taken over for private holidays or events; when it isn’t, the happy reality becomes that of a house-hotel, with 11 rooms split between the main villa, three garden pavilions and a private annexe with a pool, all offering unique configurations of colour, art, light and nature.
Van den Bergh first laid eyes on it eight years ago, during a search for a second family home; initially, he and Corinne spent weeks in the medina proper, weighing the idea of life there while based at a riad. “The Unesco designation, all that energy… visiting is brilliant,” he says. “But living there was a bit too much of everything – noise, pollution, tourists.” So began the search further afield; van den Bergh estimates they saw about 20 places before coming upon Jnane Rumi. “Either the house was great but the land was at best so-so; or, the reverse.”
It was the garden that clinched it – huge, green, shaded by large old palms and cedars, sketched here and there with flurries of bougainvillea, the whole anchored by a long pool tiled in turquoise chevron patterns. But the house was unique as well: “It was a bungalow, basically – elegant, four bedrooms, not enormous – but one of the five oldest houses in the whole Palmeraie.” It was designed in the mid-last century by Charles Boccara, the Tunisian architect who also designed Marrakech’s Theatre Royal. “Boccara himself lived here for years, and after him the Moroccan sociologist Paul Pascon, and all sorts of artists and intellectuals were always passing through.”
The seven-year journey from that bungalow to the two-storey villa and standalone pavilions that today make up the property was challenging. Van den Bergh found an aesthetic ally in architect Nicolas Bodé, a Boccara protégé, who helped him elaborate Boccara’s style across a much larger footprint. But there were setbacks, including the discovery, halfway through the addition of the second storey, that Boccara had built his lovely house sans foundation. The enforced pauses gave the van de Berghs occasion to rethink their goal: “We realised we had an opportunity, and the means, to create something much more than the house we’d imagined. We could make a place that would feed all of our cultural interests, and make them accessible to others” – something “on a much grander scale” than just a second home.
“I first heard from Gert in January 2020,” says the Moroccan artist Samy Snoussi. “The message read something like, ‘I’m opening a house-hotel in Marrakech, and I’m looking for a curator.” Snoussi, who had zero curatorial experience at the time, was intrigued: “I thought maybe I’d bring a couple of pieces over and that would be it, a one-off. But very quickly it became clear this was someone who saw where the art world was at in Morocco, and who understood what he had in terms of potential with Jnane Rumi, which was [a place] to really kind of make the cultural weather here.”
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“There’s a Moroccan-Dutch art scene in Amsterdam that’s really vibrant,” says van den Bergh. “Time and again I heard: ‘You’re sitting on a gold mine – you can build a bridge between western Europe and north Africa, you have to do something with this [opportunity].’ Given my place in Dutch culture” – van den Bergh is one of Europe’s pre-eminent restitution-law specialists and sits on various arts boards in the Netherlands – “it seemed elementary. And Samy was born to curate,” he adds.
“Myself, a lot of these artists, we’re thinking constantly about what it means to be African and international at the same time,” Snoussi says. “Samir Toumi [alias Iramo], for example, grew up very poor in Casablanca; he works a lot with soap because it’s ‘poor’ material, and connects clearly to his roots.” Toumi’s striking map of the African continent hangs in one of the smaller lounges; comprised of honey-hued soap bars set into a round panel, its upper-left section – the Maghreb – is deeply carved with elaborate decorative script that flares in the moving light.
Hanging on either side of a large fireplace in the grand salon are two tapestries: one, a khayamiya panel by the Morocco- and Paris-based French artist Louis Barthélemy, was commissioned expressly for Jnane Rumi. The other is a silk-thread embroidery by Paris-born Margaux Derhy, an artist now based in Massa, southern Morocco; it took her and more than five embroiderers there six months to complete.
Elsewhere in the house, artworks are focal points, on their own or in dialogue; all co-existing with gleaming multi-hued tiled floors and an extremely tasteful mix of antiques, textiles and rugs. Much of it has been sourced from the private warehouses of Mustapha Blaoui, the proprietor of Trésors des Nomades in the medina, a name known to every interior designer from Pimlico to Palm Beach. The decor was, says van den Bergh, a “group effort” that came together over months.
But for all the meticulous curation, Jnane Rumi feels like nothing if not a house to relax in. Wander through the sitting rooms, as chaabi music wafts quietly on the breeze coming through the open French doors, and you find any number of private corners in which to stop, sit, read a novel – there are dozens of them in various languages on shelves throughout the house – or sip a mint tea. Ask Armir, the guest relations manager, for whatever you want (some briouates to snack on, a fresh green juice, a gin and tonic) and for it to be served wherever you want it (by the pool, at one of the tables under the cedars, on the shady terrace of your room, semi-enclosed in intricate wood menzeh, or valences). At night when you head to bed, the fire is already lit in your room; in the morning, silver pots of coffee are brought to your door if you like. Beyond how pleasing it all is to look at, the welcome that van den Bergh and his team offer is the winning thing – both genuine and elegant.
That hospitality extends to the kitchen, where van den Bergh has enlisted the help of Karin Gaasterland, formerly the chef-proprietor of Balthazar’s Keuken, a 10-seat restaurant that has resided at the top of Amsterdam Best lists since opening in 1995. A champion of seasonal, hyperlocal cuisine ante litteram, Gaasterland has form with Moroccan produce, farms and food traditions, having consulted for Vanessa Branson in 2018 on a total reinvention of the menus at El Fenn, her Marrakech riad.
For months Gaasterland has been collaborating with Saida Ait ben Hamed, Jnane Rumi’s house chef, playing with recipes and manipulating ingredients, deconstructing traditional dishes and remaking them anew. Flavours are often unmistakably of the place, but presented in clean, fresh configurations. Like the rest of Jnane Rumi, it feels like a new take on Morocco; and naturally, it’s all beautiful to look at.
Rooms from €500 including breakfast; visit jnanerumi.com for prices for exclusive buyouts