What are the best photo spots in Chefchaouen?

Chefchaouen is the most purely photogenic town in Morocco, and the wonderful thing is that the entire old medina is the photo spot — there's no single monument you queue for, just an endless tumble of blue-washed lanes, indigo staircases, rounded keyhole doorways, and walls dressed with terracotta flower pots and trailing greenery. My one rule that changes everything: shoot it early. Be out at first light, because by mid-to-late morning the day-trip buses arrive from Tangier and Fes and the prettiest alleys fill with people and selfie sticks.

The famous frames are the steep blue staircases (the most photographed is the flower-pot-lined stair near Plaza Uta el-Hammam, but every neighbourhood has them), the contrast of a brightly dressed local or a stray cat against the saturated blue, and the keyhole doors painted in deeper blues and turquoises. Wander upward and uphill — the higher, older lanes toward the edge of town are quieter, even mid-morning, and just as beautiful. The little details reward you: a blue bicycle against a blue wall, hanging carpets and woven blankets adding warm colour, a doorway curtain blowing.

For the big landscape shot, climb to the Spanish Mosque viewpoint (Bouzafar Mosque) on the hillside east of town. It's a 20–30 minute uphill walk and it delivers the postcard: the whole blue medina spilling down the green Rif mountainside, best at sunset when the low light warms the white-and-blue town and the valley glows. Get there 45 minutes before sunset to claim a spot, because it's become popular. Sunrise from the same viewpoint is quieter and lovely too, with mist often sitting in the valley.

In the town itself, Plaza Uta el-Hammam is the photogenic heart — the square with its café terraces, the red-walled kasbah and the octagonal minaret of the Grand Mosque. The kasbah's gardens and tower give elevated views, and just outside the medina the Ras el-Maa waterfall and spring, where women still wash clothes and locals gather, is a lovely slice of everyday life with the cascading blue town climbing behind it. The lanes leading up from Ras el-Maa are some of the most atmospheric and least crowded.

My advice is to give Chefchaouen at least one overnight rather than a day trip — staying in town is the only way to have the blue alleys to yourself at dawn and to catch the Spanish Mosque at sunset on the same visit. We build exactly that into the route: arrive in the afternoon, sunset at the viewpoint, then the empty blue streets at sunrise before the buses roll in. It's a small change that gives you the images everyone else misses.