Moroccan Villa

A Ryad in Vichy

There is an oasis, a secret place, a pocket Cherifian kingdom in the middle of the thermal district, where the heat has no hold. From the outside, nothing distinguishes this house from the others, except for a frieze on the floor and a sparkling white façade.

An oasis

in the middle of the city

Summer in Vichy, when the sun burns the city, everyone looks for his or her shade, that of the large trees along the river, the more ephemeral one of an awning. Every move is seen as a journey and life seems to be suspended in the slightest trickle of air. The people of Vichy are in apnea. All the people of Vichy? Not all. There is an oasis, a secret place, a pocket Cherifian kingdom in the middle of the thermal district, where the heat has no hold. From the outside, nothing distinguishes this house from the others except for a frieze on the floor and a sparkling white façade. Black is not the order of the day in this Belle Epoque house remodeled in the 1930s by a wealthy French colonist from Morocco, an avid follower of the thermal cures in Vichy.

Nostalgia or architectural fantasy?

probably a bit of both.

the story would be almost banal except that here the man brought in Moroccan workers to reproduce a riad identically. The front door of the house, studded, in dark tinted wood, crossed with geometrical bronze patterns, brings us back, with its shell inlays, to the immemorial times, when the Sahara was still a sea. Barely enough time to notice the motto that adorns the door “Ehlem Wa Salam, be welcome” that we already enter an airlock closed by an opaque glass door. A marble entrance, quite classic in this kind of house, echoes two magnificent wooden arabesques finely chiseled that adorn the ceiling. Past the living room, an amazing patio awaits us and gives us the impression of living this alternation between heat and coolness that gives rhythm to life in ouarzazate or in all other palm groves, fragile vegetal advances facing the abrasive march of the desert.

A Riad in Vichy

a secret place

This secret place evokes dreams for our host, who recently bought this beautiful house, in which the sound of water running between the basins, the smell of lemon trees, landscapes and a part of intimacy linked to childhood are mixed. The fountain at the end of the patio could bring us back to the heart of the Medina, in the intimacy of a riad that is both closed and open. Hermetically sealed from the tumult outside and open to meditation with its starry nights that plunge into the heart of the house. The balance of this oriental patio with its nine arcades, in the shape of a horseshoe arch, supported by twisted columns with sculpted capitals and topped by a roof with glazed tiles, is based on its U shape. In the center, a mosaic pool, on each side of the courtyards decorated with frescoes, two benches with wooden seats, backs and armrests. A little further, on both sides of the patio, planters with olive trees finish convincing us that we are not in Vichy but in Morocco. Looking at the house from the patio, we realize that, of the two moucharabiehs that once adorned the two windows on the second floor, only one remains, the only departure from the perfect symmetry that reigns in this profusion of Moroccan zelliges. a hitch in the harmony of the house? Not enough to prevent its owner from dreaming under the stars while drinking mint tea, from following the path of the sun while taking a nap, from meditating or even from projecting himself in the middle of Fantasia, he who loves nothing more than the tranquility of this little piece of elsewhere…

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