taroudant: The Peace Palace

For its size Taroudant has a number of excellent upmarket hotels. The swankiest is the Gazelle D'Or situate a couple of kilometres outside town in an old hunting lodge with extensive grounds. It is reputedly the most expensive hotel in North Africa and its clientele is the like if Jacques Chirac, Francois Mitterand, Brad Pitt and our late lamented John Mortimer. It offers sybaratic luxury,security and seclusion and I have never set foot there. A newcomer is the Dar Zitaoune just outside the town walls but this side of the bridge. It is reputedly very comfortable with prices to match but you need a vehicle to visit the town proper.
The grand old lady is the Palais Salaam. Architecturally it is part of the Kasbah and was formerly the Pasha's Palace. It is the hotel we always stayed at with fabulous gardens with century old banana plants and hibiscus trees, and a grand water feature housing terrapins and aviaries of brightly colured parakeets and canaries.  The room were slightly shabby but with wonderful handpainted designs on the doors and ceilings. The public areas resplendent with antiques and wonderful old brass lamps.
About 18 months ago soon after we bought Dar Barbara the Palais changed hands. There were rumours of financial difficulties. We visited for the birthday boy's lunch and there were some changes. The old lamps of seemingly great antiquity and value have gone and been replaced by modern "traditional" fittings such as can be bought in any souk. The toilets at the swimming pool with the handpainted cubicle doors are no more and are converted to a doorless storeroom. New facilties have been built in an old outhouse which are shiny and modern and doubtless work much better but could belong to any restaurant from Marrakech to Moscow. On the positive side the hotel seemed more prosperous with a number of coaches in the car park and the lunch menu had been revamped to include some morrocan dishes. It would seem the Palais will survive competition into the 21C.
I may mourn the old brass lamps but it is one of the places you should stay on any trip if you are not in the Gazelle D'Or league. Other places may be done up or restored to dazzling effect but what you can't "quick fix" is a continuously tended 100yearold garden and the lamps whilst substitutes will still create a fairytale magic in the evening when you will truly believe that Scheherazade is round the next corner.