MARRAKECH, Morocco - There won't be a sign, and every doorway will look the same. The street won't appear on a map. The taxi driver won't know how to get there.

But somewhere near the guesthouse in the heart of the Marrakech medina where you booked a room, a gaggle of children will be sitting on a stoop, watching you in your confusion. If you ask them for directions, they will jump up and swarm, demanding money. Promise nothing, but give them something, because they will know the way.

That's how I found the Riad al Moussika, where I stayed for three days recently while visiting a city that has remade itself. The improved Marrakech offers a new variety of accommodation options, including the riads, or small hotels, in handsome, historic medina townhouses.

The Riad al Moussika, in a mid-19th-century dwelling, is on the south side of the city's hot, crowded, boisterous medina, where simply going out for a walk exposes a traveler to sensory overload. Before it became a guesthouse, the riad was owned by Si Hadj Thami el Glaoui, the urbane but cruel pasha of Marrakech, a torture aficionado and a friend of Winston Churchill.

I was admitted by Giovanni Robazza, the current owner and a Marrakech habitue who wears a long, white djellaba made of fine cotton. Robazza is an Italian, who, like many other Europeans, bought riads, the old walled residences of the medina, and turned them into guesthouses.

The riads' often-blank entryways belie the paradise inside. The Riad al Moussika, built around courtyards, opens onto a shady courtyard with a long, rectangular splash pool lined by many-colored, hand-cut mosaic tiles. The music of caged songbirds fills the air.

The term riad is loosely applied to traditional dwellings turned inward toward their courtyards in Marrakech, Fes, Rabat and Meknes, the four imperial cities of Morocco.

Abdelatif Ben Abdellah, who came to Marrakech as a student, fell in love with the architecture in the medina and has restored about 40 riads in the last 15 years, told me that a courtyard in a true riad must have a fountain and trees. Beyond that, he said, the principal, elevating characteristic of such dwellings is their openness to heaven, their interior squares of blue sky.

"Little windows on side walls are not enough. People need to connect with the sun on the tops of their heads," he told me over espresso at Dar Cherifa, a coffeehouse he opened in one of the oldest medina townhouses, which he restored.

Dar Cherifa, which dates from the 15th century, has a cool, pink courtyard with a floor of smooth, sensual tile made of lime; high, gracefully proportioned archways; a carved and painted cedar ceiling; and stuccoing so intricately patterned that the craftsmen who made it had to have been mathematicians, Abdellah said.

Abdellah, who owns Marrakech Riads, a group of five restored guesthouses in the medina, is one of the few native Moroccans in the riad business. Most were purchased by Europeans in the 1990s for as little as $50,000 and renovated as chic Moroccan-modern vacation homes, sometimes with scant concern for historic and architectural integrity.

Whether Moorish or midcentury modern, the riads proved expensive to maintain. So, like the owners of historic homes converted to bed-and-breakfast inns in the United States, the owners here have welcomed paying guests. Now the medina is dotted with hundreds of riad restaurants, cafes and guesthouses. No one knows how many, because the tourist office hasn't yet figured out how to monitor and rank them, as it does with hotels. Their advent has given tourists a way to understand and explore the secret heart of the walled city.

Unlike hotels, and much to the satisfaction of certain travelers, riads are imprinted with the personalities of their owners. At Al Moussika, Robazza croons Italian opera, quotes Dante, and is almost always around to look after guests. That includes keeping fresh-squeezed orange juice at hand, arranging massages and exfoliating treatments, making dinner reservations at his favorite medina restaurants, and booking taxis.

For such attention, tourists pay European top-dollar prices (about the equivalents of $150 to $300 U.S. a night).

Fortunately, there are much less expensive options, including the Riad Malika. By the time I moved there from the Riad al Moussika, finding my way through the inner medina no longer fazed me.

I had to ring the bell several times before the manager opened the door and admitted me to a large, leafy courtyard with mismatched tables and chairs and staircases leading in mysterious directions.

To get to my chamber, I had to climb two steep flights of stairs, cross the roof terrace, and descend another narrow, curving staircase, which brought me to a rickety wooden door.

It yielded to my room - dark and musty-smelling. The tub made me wish I had a can of cleanser. The over-taxed electrical outlets looked like fire hazards. The carpets needed to be taken outdoors and beaten.

I stood on the roof terrace looking at the low, jumbled cityscape, with its minarets and satellite dishes. Among rooftops nearby were some with awnings and greenery - riads, I surmised, easier to find from above than at ground level, the square eyes of their courtyards gazing into the darkening sky. Once I loosened up, I settled down and enjoyed the place, with its laid-back, live-and-let-live air.

source: Los Angeles Times