What’s a perfect day in Fes?

Fes is the most overwhelming and most rewarding of Morocco’s cities, and a perfect day there means surrendering to its medieval medina rather than fighting it. I always start with a guide — the Fes el-Bali is a 1,200-year-old labyrinth of nine thousand lanes, and getting lost here is genuinely possible. With a good guide the morning becomes a revelation: you pass through the great gate of Bab Boujloud, you stand in the breathtaking tilework of the Bou Inania and Al-Attarine madrasas, and you peer into the courtyard of the Karaouine, the world’s oldest continuously operating university. Every few metres there’s a thousand years of history pressed into the walls.

No Fes day is complete without the tanneries. You climb to a leather terrace, they hand you a sprig of mint to hold against your nose, and you look down at the great honeycomb of stone vats — reds and yellows and browns — where men have dyed hides by hand exactly this way since the Middle Ages. It assaults every sense at once and it is unforgettable. From there I like a rooftop lunch where you can finally see the medina whole: a sea of pale rooftops and green minarets spilling down the valley, the call to prayer rising from a dozen mosques at once.

The afternoon belongs to the craftsmen, because Fes is the artisan heart of Morocco. You watch coppersmiths hammer in the Seffarine square, the sound ringing off the walls; you visit a ceramic cooperative where the famous Fassi blue is painted by hand and the zellij mosaic tiles are chipped one by one; you find a weaver at his loom. This is where I tell people to buy — the craftsmanship here is the real thing, and you’re buying directly from the maker.

As the day cools, escape the maze and drive up to the Merinid Tombs or the ramparts on the hillside above the city. From up there, at golden hour, the whole of Fes el-Bali glows below you, smoke and birdsong and the last sun catching the minarets, and the call to prayer rolls up the valley in waves. After a day inside the labyrinth, that wide, quiet view is the perfect exhale — the city laid out beneath you like a living museum, exactly as it has looked for a thousand years.