A fortnight ago, I arrived at the most famous hotel in Marrakesh to find a whodunnit hanging over it — not an Agatha Christie-style pistol job, but a case of “Who stole the bloody rotisserie?”.

A valuable new roasting spit had vanished during the renovation of La Mamounia, which reopens this Tuesday. The thing had probably been smuggled out and flogged off as a priceless Berber tent peg to some gormless collector from Fulham.

It was just another chapter in a difficult rebirth that also involved an outlay of more than £100m, a Godot-like wait of three years and a face-lift on a scale that even Joan Rivers would baulk at.

None of it comes a second too soon. Designed in 1923, the hotel was once the Claridge’s of Marrakesh, host to Churchill, Chaplin, de Gaulle, Deneuve.

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It stepped out in films such as Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and scrubbed up for Hockney’s crayon-on-paper Chairs, Mamounia Hotel, Marrakesh 1971.

Occasional updates, how­ever, merged art deco with Dynasty: chichi chandeliers, a disco and geometric-print bedspreads that could melt eyeballs at 50 paces. Over 20 years, the hotel faded while the city nurtured a funky-medina scene of designer riads. By the time La Mamounia went under wraps in 2006, it was a dowdy anachronism.

“It could no longer be an ambassador of hospitality in Morocco,” Didier Picquot, the general manager, told me when I checked in. I could hardly dis­agree, after a last uninspiring stay in 2002.

So, can the place reclaim its golden-age status? After a nose around, I reckon it can. But fans of La Mamounia as it was should look away now — behind the same old salmon-tone facades, there’s a new kid in town.

Gone are the livid-patterned carpets and the camp, Busby Berkeley-look mirrored dressing tables; in their place are plain rugs over acres of high-gloss Italian marble.

Marquetry wanders across the walls; giant floor-standing lanterns line the corridors; the lobby, which once had all the atmosphere of an airline office, is now dimmed permanently to “nightclub”, with bossa nova sounds eddying around claret armchairs and subtle hexa­gonal Moroccan tables.

These are clues to the man be­hind the make­over, Jacques Garcia, whose baroque-boudoir style first struck a pose in 1996 at Hotel Costes, in Paris. He knew La Mam­ounia in the late 1960s and never liked its 1980s in­car­nation. “C’était trop,” he put it when we met. Yet the hotel was always an extraordinary place for him, and, give or take a flourish or two, he hasn’t let it down.

Don’t bother with the signature suites: the lesser rooms steal the show, with white claw-foot tubs in surgically clean bathrooms, bedroom walls of discreet zillij tiling and studded bedheads.

Book a deluxe overlooking the hotel’s palmy gardens and you can watch the day disappear over the Atlas Mountains from your terrace. Churchill called it “the most lovely spot in the whole world”. Pour a G&T and you may well agree.

And so to dinner. There’s a great gourmet French restaurant (Le Français), an Italian (L’Italien) and a Moroccan (have a guess), set in an atmospheric new riad in the gardens. The last one is the triumph: a vast improvement on its predecessor, where you felt you were starring in one of those “just round the corner from this cinema” ads.

La Mamounia has got its groove back — even the old disco is now a multi-chambered spa and the new pool is a striking square bassin perfect for lazy weekenders. They just need to send the staff there for a day to relax.

Having three men rugby-tackle you while showing you to a leisurely poolside breakfast can overwhelm. Some seem to have been fitted with Terminator-style long-range vision, and from 500 yards can home in on guests “in distress” — pouring their own coffee, say, or rearranging a towel.

They’re all hyper-professional, and I’m confident that they’ll calm down with time. If not, they might just end up skewered by some exasperated soul wielding that shiny replacement roasting spit.

Travel details: Nick Redman travelled as a guest of Royal Air Maroc (royalairmaroc.com) and La Mamounia (00 212 524 388600, mamounia.com), where doubles start at £484, room-only. Tour operators offer better value: Carrier (0161 491 7650, carrier.co.uk) has four nights from £1,005pp, flying from Gatwick with Atlas Blue (atlas-blue.com). Or try The Best of Morocco (0845 026 4588, realmorocco.com) or Kirker Holidays (020 7593 2283, www.kirkerholidays.com).

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