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1923
A painter sent to Morocco to recover made a garden here in 1923
Jacques Majorelle, a French artist, was sent to Morocco around 1917 to recover from a serious illness. He fell in love with the colors and street life of Marrakech and decided to settle there. In 1923 he bought a four-acre plot on the edge of a palm grove and built a house.
The villa
A Cubist villa was added in 1931, and the garden took forty years
In 1931 Majorelle commissioned the architect Paul Sinoir to design a Cubist villa for the property. He gradually bought more land, and began planting a luxuriant garden that became his life's work. He devoted almost forty years to developing it, beginning in 1923.
The blue
He patented the blue that carries his name
The bold cobalt blue used all over the garden and its buildings was inspired by the colored tiles Majorelle saw around Marrakech and in Berber burnouses. It is named after him, Majorelle Blue. Before he died he patented the color.
1980s
Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé saved it from decay
The garden was costly to run, and Majorelle opened it to the public in 1947. After his divorce in the 1950s he was forced to sell the house and land, and the garden was neglected and fell into disrepair. In the 1980s the fashion designers Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé rediscovered it and set about restoring it. They owned the villa until 2008.
Today
The villa now holds a Berber museum, and a second museum opened nearby
The garden is a one-hectare botanical garden and artist's landscape garden. It has an important collection of cacti and sculptures. Since 2011 the villa has been home to the Berber Museum, which shows objects of Amazigh culture, and in 2017 the Yves Saint Laurent Museum opened nearby.
Day 3, morning
Next is Yves Saint Laurent Museum.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Majorelle Garden, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.