A riad is a traditional Moroccan townhouse built around an interior courtyard — blank-walled and anonymous from the outside, but opening into a space of carved plasterwork, cedar balconies, a central fountain, and sometimes a garden of orange trees and jasmine. Staying in one changes your experience of the medina fundamentally. From outside, the alley gives nothing away; the door, when it opens, reveals a completely different world.
Riads range from basic family houses with a few rooms to restore and offer to travellers, to full boutique hotels with rooftop pools and fine restaurants. The choice matters: a good riad will have staff who can orient you in the medina and advise on what to see; a bad one is simply a damp house. The best are in Fes el-Bali rather than near the Bab Boujeloud tourist zone — deeper in the medina, harder to reach by hand-cart, and correspondingly more atmospheric. Three nights is the right minimum to justify dragging your luggage to a doorbell you can't find in an alley with no name.