Welcome to the Riad
It is with great pleasure that Catherine, Paul and Jeanne welcome you to Jardin des Biehn, a haven of peace, consisting of simplicity and harmony. The Biehns are a French family who fell in love with Fez and came to settle there in 2010.
Michel and Catherine lovingly restored the summer palace of a Pasha who lived there for three years and created one of the most wonderful riads in the medina, housed in a magnificent Andalusian garden.
Reflecting a beautiful love of life, the Biehn Garden is now run by their son, Paul, and the Riad, like the Restaurant, is above all a place of exchange between its owners and its visitors, gourmets of authenticity, of culture, escape, and good times.
The history of the Riad
When the Biehn family discovered this former secret outbuilding of Pasha El Mokri’s palace, the buildings were largely in ruins and the garden fallow.
The long and complex restoration work carried out with craftsmen from Fez revealed what they had foreseen: the place is magical and the results breathtaking.
This very small palace located not far from the big one was fitted out around 1906 by Si Tayeb El Mokri, son of the Grand Vizier Mohammed el Mokri, and himself Minister of Cherifian Finances under the reign of Moulay Hafid until 1912, then Pasha of Casablanca , from 1927 until his death in Fez in 1949.
Legendary figure, all of Fez still speaks today of Pacha El Mokri >
A man of power who minted coins in his likeness, Si Tayeb El Mokri was also a man of taste, traveler, pianist and music lover. He was the first in Morocco to bring a grand piano there.
In love with modernity, he had an expensive hydraulic system installed in his palace to transport sound from one room to another and thus be able to hear his musicians everywhere. His four wives themselves played the violin and the oud.
He also had his own photographic laboratory and he would have, it is said in Fez, always photographed everything around him, throughout his life, until the most intimate moments. But, shortly before his death, he unfortunately had all the plates destroyed.
He had this little palace converted from an elegant, much older garden pavilion, some superb traces of which have been restored, such as the old hammam. He came there to rest away from the world and the noise, and he gave his “private audiences” there, as his heirs modestly explain.
The team, at your service
Loyal since the opening of the Riad, the team of Jardin des Biehn is in a way another family story.
Manager, chef, waiters, housekeepers, masseuse and beautician of the hammam, gardener, caretaker… these are 18 people who work with their hearts to guarantee your comfort with one mission: to make you want to come back!
