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The oldest medina
Fes
Fes el-Bali is the largest car-free urban area on earth and the most complete medieval city in the Arab world. It is also a place where, without a guide, you will spend your first day lost and your second wondering what you missed.
The character of the place
What Fes is actually like
The Medina was founded in 789 and has been continuously inhabited since. Al-Qarawiyyin, established in 859, has a reasonable claim to being the oldest degree-granting university still operating. None of this is presented as heritage; it is simply how the city works.
Fes is the craft capital of Morocco: tanning, brass, mosaic zellige, weaving and leatherwork are all still done by hand in workshops you can walk into. The tanneries are the famous image, but the brass souk at Seffarine is the one people remember – a square where fifty hammers are going at once.
When to go
Season by season
The honest version, including the months we would steer you away from.
March to May
Ideal. The Medina is bearable to walk all day and the hills behind the city are green.
June to August
Hot and airless inside the walls. Early mornings only, with long afternoons in the riad.
September to November
Excellent, and quieter than spring. The Fes Festival of Sufi Culture falls in October.
December to February
Cold, wet at times, and atmospheric. Riads with fireplaces earn their keep.
What we would do
Worth your time in Fes
Our picks
Chouara tannery from a leather shop terrace, with mint held under your nose
The Seffarine brass square, where nobody is performing for visitors
A zellige atelier, where the geometry is cut freehand from memory
The Merenid tombs at sunset, for the only wide view of the Medina there is
Where to stay
The kinds of places we book
Dars in Fes el-Bali
Restored family houses, often four or five rooms. Expect to be walked in from the nearest vehicle access.
Palais hotels
Larger, grander and easier to reach, at the cost of some intimacy.
Journeys
Journeys that include Fes
Marrakech
Imperial Cities & the Sahara
The journey most people picture when they imagine Morocco, slowed down until it becomes something else entirely. Two imperial cities, a cedar forest, a gorge, and three nights where the road simply ends.
9 days / 8 nights · 2-8 travellers · From 4,850 EUR per person
Berber villages
High Atlas & Desert Edge
For travellers who would rather walk than shop. Three days in the High Atlas staying with families in the Ait Bouguemez, then down the southern slope to a stretch of desert almost nobody visits.
7 days / 6 nights · 2-6 travellers · From 3,650 EUR per person
Essaouira
Coast & Medina
Morocco at sea level. Three nights in Essaouira where the wind never stops and nothing is in a hurry, two in Marrakech, and an argan cooperative in between. The journey we send people on when they want to come back rested.
6 days / 5 nights · 2-8 travellers · From 2,980 EUR per person
Start a conversation
Tell us what you want from Morocco
Every journey we arrange begins with a conversation rather than a brochure. Tell us when you can travel, how you like to move, and what you would rather avoid – we will come back with a route, not a quote.