Above: The spa lobby at Royal Mansour

Although Marrakech has outgrown its crenellated pink ramparts and the numerous flights into its gleaming international airport make the city easily accessible from the rest of the world, you only have to turn a corner in the medina to find scenes of local life unchanged in centuries: a baker standing before an ancient wood-fired oven; a craftsman beating brass with a wooden mallet; a dyer with stained hands working beneath gaudy skeins of silk.

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