Choosing your derb: access, neighbours, width
Two riads two hundred metres apart are not worth the same. The difference comes down to three or four parameters.
In the medina, the address is not read on a map but in the derb. Two houses of identical size, two hundred metres apart, can sell for single or double depending on four parameters.
1. Walking distance to a square or a gate
What counts is not the distance as the crow flies but the real walking time, with a suitcase, at night, without getting lost. A riad eight minutes from Jemaa el-Fna along a legible route beats a riad five minutes away through a maze. That is why our listings give minutes, not metres.
2. The width of the derb
It decides guest access, the haulage of materials during the works, and whether heavy equipment can ever be brought in. Below 1.5 m, everything becomes an operation. Above 3 m, a cart gets through, and sometimes a vehicle.
3. The immediate neighbourhood
A quiet residential derb and a busy commercial one do not produce the same guest experience. Two or three guest houses already operating nearby is rather a good sign: the area is used to it, the lighting is better, and passing footfall reassures travellers at night.
4. Vehicle access to the nearest gate
Nobody drives inside a derb, but everybody arrives by car or taxi at a gate. The distance between that gate and the house is the first figure travellers remember — and the first thing they mention in a review.
In the medina you are not buying a floor area, you are buying a route.