Coastal Morocco

Morocco’s prestigious coastline stretches from the calm bays and beaches of the Mediterranean around the Strait of Gibraltar and south for over 2,000 kilometres past Tangier, Rabat, Casablanca, Essaouira and Agadir. If you’re in the market for year-round sunshine and wide, empty beaches then this is the place to come.

The holiday potential of this vast stretch of shoreline has only recently begun to be explored, at least at a luxury level. One of the trailblazers is La Fiermontina Ocean, an eco-retreat in north-western Morocco, whose delightful suites and villas and traditional stone houses are set back from the beach among olive groves and orchards.

Another is Royal Mansour Casablanca, which offers panoramic views of the city’s incredible Hassan II Mosque. South of Casablanca, Mazagan Beach & Golf Resort is set on a seven-kilometre beach in the former Portuguese colony of El Jadida, where old churches and synagogues rub shoulders with mosques and a UNESCO-listed fortress.

Keep heading south and you’ll find La Sultana Oualidia overlooking a lagoon and sandy surf beaches. Colourful fishing boats chug by all day, flamingos and stilts congregate up the estuary, and low tide reveals the oysters for which the region is rightly famous.

Or perhaps you’d prefer the calm of Royal Mansour Tamuda Bay near Tetouan in the north, where palatial suites and a 700-metre beach are cooled by the breeze off the Mediterranean.