Menara Gardens

This guide to Menara Gardens in Marrakesh opens with the local legend of Sultan Moulay Ismail, the seventeenth-century ruler said to have dropped a displeasing lover from the pavilion balcony into the pool below. You'll hear how the huge reflecting pool actually predates that story by centuries, laid out by the Almohad ruler Abd al-Mu'min in 1157, and how khettara tunnels still carry water fifty kilometers from the Atlas Mountains to keep the orchard green. The green-roofed pavilion mirrored in the water came later still, built as a royal retreat in the 1860s.