Majorelle Garden

Behind a plain wall in the Gueliz district of Marrakesh lies one of the most famous colours in the world. The painter Jacques Majorelle, who had settled in the city, began laying out a garden here in 1923 and spent close to forty years on it. In 1931 he added a studio designed by the architect Paul Sinoir, a cubist block that he painted in a deep, electric ultramarine taken from the tiles and textiles he saw around him in Morocco. Majorelle blue now bears his name, and against it the rest of the garden is set, the grey-green of cacti and the deep shade of greenery made all the more vivid by that saturated wall of colour.

The garden itself is small, about one hectare, but it is dense and carefully composed. Paths wind between groves of bamboo, palms and large cactus collections, past pools and basins, under light filtered through tall foliage; more than fifteen bird species native to North Africa have made it their home. Majorelle opened it to visitors in 1947, partly to meet the cost of keeping it up, but in the 1950s money troubles forced him to sell the house, and the garden slid into disrepair; he died in 1962.

Its revival came from fashion. Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé had known the garden since the 1960s, and in 1980, hearing that it was threatened by a property development, they bought it together with the villa and set about a long restoration. When Saint Laurent died in 2008, his ashes were scattered in the garden, and two years later the street outside was renamed in his honour. The blue studio now houses the Pierre Bergé Museum of Berber Arts, devoted to the Amazigh cultures of Morocco, and since 2017 a separate Yves Saint Laurent museum stands a few steps away. With several hundred thousand visitors a year, the garden is quietest at opening time.

Getting there

The garden is on Rue Yves Saint Laurent in Gueliz, the modern quarter of Marrakesh, less than 1 km from the centre of the new town. Marrakesh Menara Airport (RAK) is about 5 km away.