Fes, Morocco

What Kind of City Is Fes?

Fes is one of those cities that grabs you before you fully understand what’s happening. You step through a gate in the ancient walls and suddenly the 21st century dissolves – the lanes narrow, the sounds layer on top of each other (a muezzin, a hammer on copper, a donkey’s hooves on stone), and you realize you are standing inside what is widely considered the world’s largest living medieval city. Morocco has plenty of places that feel ancient, but Fes, located in the country’s north-central interior, carries that weight differently. This is not a theme park version of the past. It is a functioning, breathing city where people live, worship, study, work leather, and argue about football – all inside a 9th-century urban grid that has never really been replaced.

First-time visitors often describe arriving in Fes el-Bali as disorienting in the best possible way. There are no cars in most of the medina. Streets branch and double back. The city has somewhere around 9,400 lanes, alleys, and dead ends. Getting lost is not a risk – it is the whole point. What you find when you wander is a depth of craft, architecture, and daily life that even Marrakech, Morocco’s more famous imperial city, cannot quite match. Fes rewards patience and curiosity in equal measure.

The Medina and Its Neighborhoods

Fes is really three cities layered together, each with a completely different character.

Fes el-Bali

This is the old medina, founded in the 9th century under the Idrisid dynasty, and it is the one that defines Fes in every traveler’s imagination. It splits naturally along the Oued Fes river into two halves: Adouat el-Andalus, settled by refugees from Andalusia, and Adouat el-Qarawiyyin, settled by families from Kairouan in Tunisia. The two sides developed slightly different architectural personalities and you can still sense that distinction walking between them. The main artery, Talaa Kebira, runs downhill through the heart of the medina and is the best way to get your bearings on your first morning.

Fes el-Jdid

Built in the 13th century as the royal city adjacent to el-Bali, Fes el-Jdid contains the vast Royal Palace (Dar el-Makhzen) – you cannot go inside, but the golden gates are spectacular – and the old Mellah, the historic Jewish quarter. The Mellah has a different architectural texture from the medina: taller buildings, wrought-iron balconies, and a quieter, more subdued feel. The Jewish community that once thrived here has largely emigrated, but the heritage remains in synagogues, cemeteries, and the particular style of the houses.

Ville Nouvelle

The French colonial quarter, built in the early 20th century, sits a few kilometers from the old city. It has wide boulevards, European-style cafés, banks, pharmacies, and the train station. Most tourists spend little time here, but if you need to decompress after a few days of medina intensity, a coffee on Avenue Hassan II and some time in a bookshop feels genuinely restorative. It is also where you’ll find the most straightforward grocery shopping and ATMs.

The Essential Sights

Fes has no shortage of things to look at, but a handful of places genuinely demand your time and attention.

The Chouara Tanneries

These are the most famous image in all of Morocco – the honeycomb pits of dye, the workers knee-deep in color, the smell arriving before you even see the view. The tanneries are still operational, and the leather you see being processed here ends up in the bags, jackets, and babouche slippers sold in the surrounding souks. Most visitors view them from the terraces of the leather shops above, which provide a birds-eye look at the whole operation. Go in the morning when the colors are most vivid. Take the sprig of mint the shopkeepers offer you – it genuinely helps with the smell.

Bou Inania Madrasa

Of the several religious schools scattered through the medina, Bou Inania is the one that stops you mid-step. Built in the 14th century under the Marinid sultan Bou Inan, it is a masterpiece of Islamic architecture: carved cedarwood screens, intricate zellij tilework, stucco so detailed it looks lace-like. It is one of the few religious buildings in Fes that non-Muslims can enter, and it remains an active place of worship. Stand in the courtyard and give yourself time to actually look at what surrounds you.

Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University

Founded in 859 AD, Al-Qarawiyyin is recognized by UNESCO and the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest continuously operating university. Non-Muslims cannot enter the mosque itself, but you can peer through ornate wooden doors into the prayer hall, and the library – restored and reopened in 2016 – holds manuscripts going back over a thousand years. Walking past its walls and understanding what they contain is humbling in a quiet, persistent way.

The Nejjarine Fountain and Museum of Wooden Arts

The Nejjarine Square (Place Nejjarine) is one of the most beautiful corners of Fes el-Bali, anchored by an 18th-century fountain covered in zellij and crowned by a carved cedar canopy. The old fondouk beside it has been converted into a museum dedicated to Moroccan woodworking – a craft that is everywhere in Fes and rarely given its proper due. The rooftop terrace has one of the better views in the medina without any entrance pressure.

Borj Nord and the Merenid Tombs

Climb to the hills north of the medina at sunset. The 14th-century Merenid tombs are ruined and atmospheric, and the view from the ridge over Fes el-Bali – minarets, flat rooftops, the occasional flash of a tile dome – is the kind of panorama you’ll be turning over in your mind for years. Borj Nord, a 16th-century fortress, now houses a weapons museum and commands the same elevated position.

Eating and Drinking in Fes

Fassi cuisine – the cooking of Fes – is considered the most refined and complex in Morocco. The city has a long history as a seat of wealth and scholarship, and that translates directly into food: slow-cooked, layered with spice, generous without being heavy.

What to Eat

The dish most associated with Fes is pastilla – a paper-thin pastry pie traditionally filled with pigeon (increasingly also chicken), almonds, eggs, and spices, dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon. It sounds like an odd combination but it is extraordinary. Order it wherever it appears on a menu. Harira is the thick tomato and lentil soup that is eaten for breakfast, as an afternoon snack, and to break the fast during Ramadan – it costs almost nothing from the street stalls near Bab Bou Jeloud. Mechoui (slow-roasted lamb) appears around midday in certain souks, carved directly from whole roasted animals. Rfissa is a Fassi celebration dish of shredded flatbread, chicken, and fenugreek-spiced broth that few restaurants serve but locals make constantly for weddings and family gatherings – if you’re invited to eat it in someone’s home, accept immediately.

Where to Eat

For street food, the area around Bab Bou Jeloud and the bottom of Talaa Seghira has the highest concentration of cheap, good options. The snail soup stalls along the main lanes are worth the slightly surreal experience of eating snails from a paper cup at 10am. For a sit-down meal with proper Fassi cooking, Ruined Garden (Café Clock’s garden outpost), Café Clock itself on Derb el-Magana, and the restaurants attached to better riads all serve food that reflects the city’s cooking traditions without significant tourist compromise. Avoid the large tourist restaurants near the main gates with photograph menus – the food is uniformly mediocre and the prices are inflated.

Café Culture

Moroccan café culture is serious and male-dominated in the traditional medina coffeehouses – as a woman you may feel more comfortable at mixed-gender spots like Café Clock or the cafés in Ville Nouvelle. Mint tea is the default social drink and it is served sweet, poured from height to create foam, and refilled without asking. Coffee is typically a café au lait or a small, strong espresso called a café cassé. There is no alcohol served in the medina proper; some riad restaurants have wine lists, and a few licensed restaurants in Ville Nouvelle serve beer.

Getting Around Fes

The honest truth about navigating Fes is that the medina will defeat your GPS. Google Maps has improved significantly but it still confidently sends you into dead ends and through passages that technically exist but are not obvious from street level. A few practical realities:

• On foot: The only way to experience Fes el-Bali. Allow your first half-day to be completely directionless – get lost, find your way back to a landmark, repeat. You will learn the medina faster this way than by following any map.
• Petit taxis: The small beige taxis that operate in Fes are metered and reliable for getting between Ville Nouvelle, the medina gates, and Fes el-Jdid. They do not enter the medina itself. Always confirm the meter is running.



• Grand taxis: Shared long-distance taxis that depart from fixed points and are essential for day trips to Meknes and other nearby destinations. Faster and often more convenient than buses for short regional trips.
• Hiring a guide: A licensed official guide from the tourist office is worth the cost (roughly 250-350 MAD for a half day) for your first full day in the medina. They provide context for what you’re seeing and route you efficiently through neighborhoods you’d otherwise spend days finding. Avoid unofficial guides who approach you at the gates – they often receive commissions from specific shops and your itinerary will reflect that.

Shopping in the Souks

The medina’s souks are organized by craft in a way that has barely changed in centuries – the leather workers cluster near the tanneries, the metalworkers fill a particular lane with the sound of hammers, the woodworkers are near Nejjarine Square, the textile merchants occupy another district entirely. This organization makes shopping both navigable and genuinely interesting as a study in how a pre-industrial city economy actually functioned.

What to Buy

Leather goods from Fes are genuinely among the best in Morocco – babouche slippers, leather bags, and belts made from tannery-processed hides. Look for pieces that are fully hand-stitched rather than glued. Zellige tiles and decorative ceramics make beautiful purchases if you can manage the weight. The blue and white pottery specific to Fes (distinct from the polychrome style of Safi and Marrakech) is instantly recognizable. Argan oil and rose water are sold everywhere but buy them from cooperatives rather than random stalls for guaranteed quality. Handwoven textiles – particularly wool blankets and djellabas – are often better value in Fes than anywhere else in Morocco.

Bargaining

Bargaining is expected in the souks and the initial price quoted is rarely the real price. A reasonable opening counter is about 50-60% of the asking price, then work toward something in the middle. Do not feel obligated to buy if you cannot agree – “thank you, maybe later” is a complete sentence. If you enter a shop and drink tea, you are not obligated to purchase anything despite what the social atmosphere might suggest. The most important rule: decide what something is worth to you before you start negotiating, and walk away if it exceeds that number.

Day Trips from Fes

Fes sits in a geographically rich part of Morocco and several excellent excursions are reachable within a day.

Meknes and Volubilis

Meknes, 60 kilometers to the west, is another of Morocco’s four imperial cities and far less visited than Fes or Marrakech. Its medina has the same bones as Fes but breathes more easily – locals outnumber tourists by a significant margin and the pace is genuinely slower. The Bab Mansour gate is one of the grandest architectural achievements in all of North Africa. Combine Meknes with the Roman ruins at Volubilis, 35 kilometers further, and you have a full day that spans Rome’s empire and the Moroccan sultanate in a single excursion. Volubilis is Morocco’s best-preserved Roman site, with mosaics still in place on the floors of villas, and the setting – rolling agricultural land, distant mountains – is beautiful.

Ifrane and the Middle Atlas

About 65 kilometers south of Fes, Ifrane is known as “Morocco’s Switzerland” – a slightly absurd description that nonetheless captures something real. The town was built by the French in a European chalet style and sits at 1,665 meters altitude, which means it genuinely snows here in winter while Marrakech is merely cool. The surrounding Middle Atlas cedar forests are home to the only wild Barbary macaques in Africa outside of Gibraltar. Driving through Azrou and the cedar groves where macaques hang from branches and steal your food is unexpectedly delightful.

Sefrou

Just 28 kilometers south of Fes, Sefrou is a small town that gives you a sense of what Fes itself might have looked like before tourism. It has its own small medina, a river running through a gorge right below the old city, waterfalls nearby, and a historic Jewish quarter. It is visited by almost no foreign tourists despite being an easy, cheap grand taxi ride from Fes. Spend a morning here if you want the texture of Fassi life without the medina crowds.

Where to Stay

The most atmospheric and logistically sensible place to stay in Fes is inside the medina itself, in a riad. These traditional courtyard houses have been converted by dozens of owners – Moroccan families, French expats, British designers – into guesthouses ranging from modest and family-run to architecturally magnificent. Staying in a riad means waking up to the sound of the morning call to prayer echoing through a courtyard, breakfasting on msemen flatbread and argan oil, and walking out your door directly into the medina lanes. The trade-off is that your taxi drops you at the nearest gate and you carry your luggage the rest of the way on foot through the alleys.

For budget travelers, there are plenty of solid riads and small guesthouses in the 300-600 MAD per night range (roughly $30-60 USD) that are clean, well-located, and serve a good breakfast. Mid-range riads in the 700-1200 MAD range often have more architectural character – proper zellij courtyards, painted ceilings, roof terraces with medina views. At the top end, a handful of truly exceptional properties – Riad Fes, Palais Faraj, Dar Bensouda – offer service and design that rival the best boutique hotels anywhere in Africa.

If you prefer more conventional hotel infrastructure (elevators, parking, a gym), Ville Nouvelle has international-brand hotels that make getting around easier but place you a taxi ride away from everything interesting. It is a reasonable option if you are combining Fes with a driving itinerary through Morocco.

Practical Tips and When to Visit

Best Time to Go

Spring (March through May) and autumn (September through November) are the ideal seasons. Temperatures are comfortable – warm enough to enjoy the outdoor life of the medina, cool enough to walk without misery. Summer in Fes is genuinely hot, with temperatures regularly exceeding 40°C (104°F) in July and August; the medina’s narrow lanes provide shade but not much relief, and the city gets noticeably more crowded with Moroccan domestic tourists. Winter is mild by day and cold at night – riads without central heating can be chilly after dark, and the surrounding mountains sometimes have snow.

Visiting During Ramadan

Ramadan is a complex time to visit Fes. Many restaurants and street food stalls close during daylight hours, which limits your options significantly. But the medina at night during Ramadan is extraordinary – the streets fill after iftar (the breaking of the fast), vendors appear, families are out until midnight, and the atmosphere is unlike any other time of year. If you understand what you’re entering, it is a remarkable experience. If you just want convenient lunch options, go at a different time.

Money and Costs

Morocco uses the dirham (MAD). ATMs are readily available in Ville Nouvelle and near the main medina gates. The medina is overwhelmingly cash-based – carry small bills. Fes is generally affordable: a street food lunch costs 20-50 MAD, a coffee is 10-15 MAD, a petit taxi ride within the city rarely exceeds 15-20 MAD. A nice riad dinner with multiple courses runs 150-300 MAD per person. The main place tourists overspend is in the souks during unguided shopping without a clear sense of reference prices.

Etiquette and Respect

Fes is a conservative city, more so than Marrakech. Dress modestly in the medina – shoulders and knees covered for both men and women. Do not photograph people without asking, particularly women. When wandering into residential lanes (which you will, constantly, while lost), be matter-of-fact about backing out politely if it’s clearly a dead end into someone’s home. Friday is the day of communal prayer and some businesses close around midday; the medina is quieter in the morning and louder in the afternoon. Al-Qarawiyyin and other active mosques are not open to non-Muslims – respect the signage and do not try to enter.

Safety

Fes is safe for tourists, including solo travelers. The main irritant is persistent touts near the main gates who offer to guide you to specific shops. A calm, confident “no thank you” repeated without aggression is sufficient. Petty theft is possible in crowded areas – keep your bag in front of you. The medina can feel genuinely dark and empty at night in some sections; stick to main lanes after midnight or take a taxi back to your riad from Bab Bou Jeloud.

The city rewards anyone willing to surrender a little control – to get lost, to eat something unfamiliar, to sit in a courtyard and let the sounds of the medina settle around them. Fes is not a city you consume efficiently. It is a city you inhabit, briefly, and carry with you for much longer than you expect.

📷 Featured image by Heidi Kaden on Unsplash.