Palais Claudio Bravo

Claudio Bravo was a Chilean Hyper-realist painter. Born in 1936 he lived in Madrid and for a time New York  and painted society portraits for the likes of Franco's family, Charles Forbes and the Marcos family. In 1972 he visited Tangier where he fell in with the ex-patriot circle around Charles Forbes and Paul Bowles, bought a palace there and spent the rest of his life in Morocco. He later bought a palace in Marrakesh and in 2000 the Iranian princess who lives in Taroudant invited him here and he realised how much warmer it was in the winter. He bought a large tract of land north of the town in the Sousse valley,employed 460 workers to build a palace to his design and lived here until his death in 2011.

The palace was completed by 2005 and visiting it now it is difficult to understand that it is a totally modern house as he adapted indigenous architectural memes; but this is a house  which although designed around a series of courtyards giving privacy and shade is designed to look out to the Atlas mountains.

 On his death he left his Marrakeshi palace to the Iranian princess and the Taroundant home to his long term assistant Bashir Tabchich who had come with him from Tangier. In 2015 he opened the palais as a museum displaying Bravo's works and last year it opened as a hotel. With the Gazelle d'Or being closed and the Palais Salaam having a hard time it should do well, although there was no-one staying there when we visited for lunch last Friday.