Tazi Palace, Tangier, Morocco · North Africa

Tangier sits at the northern tip of Morocco where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean. For much of the twentieth century it was an international zone, administered by eight nations simultaneously, belonging to no one and everyone. Where Marrakech faces the desert and Fez preserves its medieval self behind high walls, Tangier faces the Strait of Gibraltar, and through it, reflections of the rest of the world.

Above the city, on a hill where olive, palm and century-old eucalyptus run down toward views of the Rif Mountains and the sea, sits a palace that Ahmed Tazi, the Sultan’s representative during the international zone, began building in the 1920s, but never completed. For decades, an ornate Moorish façade stood intact while light fell through the honeycomb skylights of its forty-foot foyer onto wilderness.

When Katara Hospitality acquired the site, the palace had stood unfinished for nearly a century. The brief was to bring it into use as a Fairmont property and to position Tangier within a new generation of Moroccan hospitality, though the site itself resisted easy answers. The terrain dropped steeply away on three sides, the only viable arrival came awkwardly from the flank, and the existing structure could not be designed around, its façade intact but its interior long since abandoned to weather and time.

The tiers resolved several practical demands at once. Parking sits in the lower levels, so guests arrive from below and climb toward the palace, which settles the awkward side approach. Guest rooms look across Tangier to the Mediterranean. Service infrastructure runs underground, concealed beneath pool decks and within hidden shafts, so the operations of a working hotel never intrude on the palace, and across the hillside the gardens unfold within the original landscape.