Are the three Amelkis villas next door to each other?

No. Amelkis is a large resort with hundreds of villas. The three are within the same gates and share the same security and clubhouse access, but they sit on different streets within the resort. We have booked all three for a single party who wanted the cluster but needed three separate compounds, the cars connect everyone in 5 to 10 minutes within the resort.

Can I play Amelkis Golf Club without being a member?

Yes. Tee times are bookable through the villa concierge, no membership required. The 36 holes were designed by Cabell Robinson and opened in 1995. Greens fees, cart rental, and rental clubs all available. Book at least 24 hours ahead in peak season.

Which villa is closest to the Medina?

Villa Insa, at 15 minutes by car. Villa 178 and Villa Aurea are 25 and 25 minutes respectively. The difference matters if you plan to be in the souks daily.

Do all three have private pools?

Yes. Each has its own private pool, garden, and outdoor dining setup. None share amenities with neighbors. Villa 178's pool is heated and has the most seating around it; Aurea's is the most architectural; Insa's is the most directly connected to the living room.

Amelkis Marrakech Villa Rental: 3 Design Houses on the Golf Resort

Amelkis is a gated golf resort 15 to 25 minutes from the Medina with three villas that read like three competing design briefs. A contemporary compound with a private cinema. An art-collector's salon in emerald and red. A modern white-on-white pavilion with a grand piano in the living room. Same gates, same fairway, three different houses.

You arrive at Amelkis through a single gate. A guard waves you through, the road bends past the practice greens, and the city falls away. What sits inside the wall is not, technically, Marrakech. It is suburban Marrakech, the way Bel Air is suburban Los Angeles. Olive groves on every side, fairways unrolling in silence, no scooters, no street music, no medina noise. The kind of address where the most disruptive sound on a Tuesday morning is a sprinkler turning on at the third hole.

Three of the villas in our Marrakech collection sit inside this gate. Same resort, same security, same olive-grove silence. And three completely different houses. We get the question often: "if the villas are all in Amelkis, are they basically interchangeable?" They are not. They were designed by three different owners, with three different briefs, and choosing the right one comes down to who is in the group and what they want the week to feel like.

Amelkis Golf Resort is a 36-hole course designed by Cabell Robinson, opened in 1995, and the residential streets that radiate out from it. The course is surrounded by walled villas built across two decades, ranging from traditional riad-style estates to glassy contemporary compounds. The clubhouse anchors a small commercial node with a restaurant, a pool, and a tennis academy. The whole resort is gated 24 hours, with security that knows the residents on sight.

For a traveler, Amelkis solves two practical problems Marrakech otherwise creates. First: parking. The Medina has none. Amelkis has private driveways at every villa and a private car park at the clubhouse. Second: scale. The Medina villas are vertical and small. Amelkis villas are horizontal and large, with private pools, gardens that open onto fairways, and rooms that fit the full group without anyone climbing a staircase carrying a glass of wine.

Villa 178 reads like a private members' club someone happened to build a house around. The architecture is contemporary in the European sense: terracotta facades, double-height ceilings, floor-to-ceiling glass on the garden wall, arched doorways borrowing just enough Moroccan grammar to keep the building grounded in place. Five en-suite bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a list of common-area amenities that would be excessive in a hotel: a private cinema with tiered seating, a fitness room with proper equipment (free weights, machines, mirrors), a wellness room built into the villa for in-house massages, and a heated pool with covered dining for ten.

The 2,000 m2 of grounds matter. The pool deck does not abut the next villa. The pergola is its own zone, separate from the lounge zone, separate from the garden lawn. A family of ten can spread out without anyone being on top of anyone. The cinema room is the surprise: not a TV-in-a-dark-room situation, an actual screening space, tiered seating, projector, sound, that turns into a default activity by night four when the group has done the souks twice and wants pizza and a movie.

Villa Aurea is the house someone with a real art collection would build. Bold color decisions: an emerald velvet sofa staring across the salon at a red accent wall, a marble-topped dining table for 8 anchored by walnut chairs, sculptural pendant lighting throwing shapes across the tadelakt. Curated contemporary art on every major wall, not the generic abstract canvases that get rotated through rentals, actual pieces you stop in front of and look at. Five en-suite bedrooms, each with its own color story.

The big architectural moment is the fireplace in the main salon. Most Marrakech villas skip the fireplace. The winters are mild, the budget is better spent on cooling. Aurea kept it because the design needed an anchor that the eye could land on, and a working fireplace doubles as a heat source on the handful of January nights when the desert temperature dives. The room around it is a real conversation room: low Togo-style sofas, a long wooden table for grazing, lighting tuned for evening rather than for Instagram. It is the villa to book when half the group reads, half the group sketches, and the energy needs to slow down by 9 PM.

Villa Insa is the most modern of the three. Red-brick exteriors give way to a near-monochrome interior: white bouclé sofas on white tile, art-niche walls cut into the architecture for vertical pieces, globe pendants throwing soft circles of light across the hallways. Floor-to-ceiling glass frames the pool and the garden. The standout object in the living room is a white grand piano. Not a decorative one. A working instrument the owner plays when he is in residence and that guests are welcome to use. We have had musicians book the villa specifically for it, but it is also a quiet anchor in a room that otherwise reads as a gallery.

The other thing Insa solves: location. It sits at the section of Amelkis closest to central Marrakech. Jemaa el-Fna is 15 minutes by car. The Majorelle Garden and the Yves Saint Laurent Museum are 14 minutes. Compared to the more remote Fes Road estates, getting to dinner at La Trattoria or shopping in Gueliz is a short ride, not a half-hour expedition. For groups who plan to use the villa as a base and spend significant time inside the city walls, Insa is the most efficient pick.

All three Amelkis villas come with full house staff included: housekeeper, cook on request, 24/7 gated security at the resort entrance and at each villa. Marrakech Menara Airport is 15 to 22 minutes depending on which villa, with private transfers arranged through Marrakech Experience (the on-the-ground operator that runs the staff and concierge across the portfolio). Tee times at Amelkis Golf Club, in-villa private chefs, hammam appointments, Atlas Mountain day trips to the Ourika Valley or the Agafay Desert, all bookable through the same concierge. Three nights minimum. Children welcome at all three. No pets at any of the three.