Is Azrou / the cedar forest worth a stop?

Azrou is one of my favourite 'reward stops' on a long transfer day. If you're driving from Fes down towards Merzouga and the dunes — a big day on the road — the Middle Atlas around Azrou and nearby Ifrane is where the landscape suddenly turns alpine: cool air, green hills, and the famous cedar forests. Breaking the journey here turns a slog into part of the experience.

The headline draw is the cedar forest just outside town, where a population of wild Barbary macaques lives among the trees. These are Morocco's only monkeys (often called 'apes'), and they come close to the roadside clearings, especially where people stop. I'll add an honest note: please don't feed them — human food harms them and habituates them in ways that aren't good for the animals — but watching them in the cedars is a real delight, particularly for families and kids who've never seen wild primates.

Beyond the macaques, the forest itself is the point. Some of these Atlas cedars are enormous and centuries old — there's a celebrated giant known locally as the 'Gouraud Cedar' — and a short walk among them, breathing the resinous mountain air at around 1,200–1,400m, is a genuine change of scene from the cities and the desert to come. The town of Azrou is workaday and Berber rather than pretty, with a small souk and a couple of cafés, but it's a decent place for a tagine and a coffee.

My verdict: as a stop, it's a clear yes — it's perfectly placed to break the Fes-to-desert drive, it's cooler than the lowlands, and the monkeys-and-cedars combination is a lovely 60–90 minute pause. As a standalone destination you'd travel hours for, no. Treat it as the scenic, restorative middle of a transfer day, ideally paired with Ifrane just up the road, and it earns its place beautifully.