Is Chefchaouen or Tetouan more worth visiting?

I'll answer the 'more worth visiting' framing head-on rather than dodging it: for the overwhelming majority of visitors, Chefchaouen is the one that justifies the journey north. Tucked into the Rif mountains and painted in endless washes of indigo and powder blue, it's one of the most photogenic places in Morocco — and crucially, it's also relaxed, walkable and a real pleasure to simply potter around. The blue lanes genuinely live up to the photos, and it has the tourist comforts (good cafés, riads, viewpoints) that make a visit easy and rewarding.

Tetouan, an hour down the road toward the coast, is the deeper cut — and whether it's 'more worth it' depends entirely on what you value. Its medina is a UNESCO-listed Andalusian old town, one of the most complete in Morocco, full of whitewashed houses, working craftsmen and ordinary Moroccan life unfolding around you rather than performed for you. There are far fewer tourists, far less English, and almost no souvenir gloss. For travellers who've grown weary of polished tourist medinas, that authenticity is precisely the reward.

Be honest with yourself about what you're after on this leg of the trip. If you want beauty, ease, and the iconic experience you've seen everywhere — and you're happy that it's become popular, so mornings before the day-trippers are best — Chefchaouen is unquestionably more worth it. If you actively prefer somewhere unsmoothed, where you're a guest in a working city rather than a customer, and a quieter, more genuine atmosphere matters more than visual drama, Tetouan rewards you in a way the blue town can't.

My practical conclusion is the one I'd choose myself: this is rarely a true either/or, because they're so close. Base yourself in Chefchaouen for a night or two — that's where the headline experience and the better tourist infrastructure are — and slip down to Tetouan for a morning or a half-day to taste the authentic medina. That way 'more worth it' stops being a competition: you get the iconic and the genuine in a single, easy northern loop.