Ditch Marrakech for Fes, Morocco's real capital of culture

Telegraph

07-06-2025

From the roof terrace of Riad Fes, I can see one of the world's greatest and last living medieval cities laid out before me. It was dreamt of by the eight-century moulay (holy man) Idris I, a grandson of the prophet Mohammed, who fled to Morocco to escape Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of the Arabian Nights.
Idris ruled nearby Walila, the old Roman city of Volubilis, but dreamt of a new capital until Harun's assassins caught up with him. So, his son Idris II finished Fes in 789, creating Morocco's first Imperial city.
Marrakech may hog the headlines, but elegant Fes is the country's cultural heart. It hides its riches in a quiet green valley in the Middle Atlas where the hills are cloaked in silvery olive groves.
Whatever you know of Marrakech won't prepare you for the immense maze of Fes el-Bali, the old town, where 9,700 serpentine alleys trace the edges of the three-storey blank walls, behind which hide riads and palaces, steaming hammams and funduqs (inns once used by caravans), verdant gardens and lively universities, tranquil mosques and madrasas, all dressed in intricately carved plaster, shimmering zellij (handcut tiles) and painted and carved cedarwood from the Middle Atlas forests.
Drama and intrigue is knit into the fabric of this great labyrinthine medina and if you want in on the intrigue you'll need a good guide. A guide here doesn't just show you the sights, but provides you with a companion to an otherwise hidden world.
Mine is smart Meryem Ameziane from Culture Insiders, who suggests we start at the newly opened Musee Al Batha. Once a glorious summer palace with sunken Andalucian gardens, its halls now tell the tale of over a thousand years of history, showing the ebb and flow of dynasties, migrations, scholarship and craft that places Fes not just at the centre of Moroccan history, but connects it to the broader pre-Islamic, Islamic and Mediterranean worlds.
Beneath technicolour cedarwood ceilings, maps show Moroccan empires that once encompassed nearly the entire Iberian peninsula, Tunis and Nouakchott, now the capital of Mauretania, and how the city's geography and Arabo-Andalucian character were established by early settlers from Cordoba and Kairouan.
Meanwhile, antique astrolobes, illuminated medical manuscripts, intricately worked minbars, gold-threaded kaftans, exquisite ceramics and the most minute zellij illustrate Fes' intellectual and creative prowess. Surprises include the story of Fatima Al Fihri, the wealthy woman who founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin over two hundred years before Europe's first university, and the sojourn of Pope Sylvester II (999-1003), who came to study Islamic jurisprudence.
After several hours, Meryem reminds me that the real thing is on the doorstep and remains to be discovered. So we head to Bab Bou Jeloud and stroll down Talaa Kebira, the medina's colourful main street lined with ceramic and carpet shops, where we admire the ingenious medieval water-clock, La Magana, which once timed the call to prayer.
Then we tour the theological colleges of Bou Inania and Attarine, built in the golden era of the Merenids in the 14th century, and take a dozen pictures of their lace-like stuccowork, delicate calligraphy and ancient carved cedarwood friezes.
The Medersa Attarine is tucked in the alleys of the spice and perfume souk near to the holy Zawiya of Moulay Idriss II, where Fes' founder lies in rest beneath glittering chandeliers and a gold-inlaid zouak ceilings. The shrine is surrounded by carts selling incense candles and flower-water that perfumes the air around the tomb.
As we're buying some sticky nougat from a bright pink cart, the muezzin starts the call to prayer and the street floods with people heading for one of the 14 doors of the Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque. Meryem points us to the door of a weaving shop, whose owner allows us onto his roof terrace where we have an awesome view, standing in the heart of the holy call as it reverberates in the acoustic bowl of the valley.
Over the next few days, I return again and again to the medina, each day with a different person who seems to show me a different city. One day I meander around the residential backstreets with photographer Omar Chennafi.
We admire the casual beauty of a fig tree hanging over a cracked mud-brick building, drink coffee in the Ruined Garden and dodge small kids taking the day's bread to the ferran (bakery).
He talks about a crisis of meaning in the modern world and how Fes is a place of 'intense, condensed human experience'.
In the evening, I have a sensation of temporal whiplash as I dine in hyper-contemporary ISHQ on beef tagine with confit tomatoes and sesame seeds.
Then I return with Meryem's colleague, Nourredine Chbani, who grew up in the medina, and sends my head spinning by weaving through alleys barely wider than my shoulders.
'GPS is useless here,' he laughs as he disappears down a shadowy tunnel. 'Just remember hexagonal signs mean a dead-end, while rectangles are for thoroughfares.' He takes me to Funduq Tazi, the last workshop that still hand-makes drums and tambourines from camel hide. I sit at the spinning painting wheel trying to paint my own drum, and we all fall about laughing at the results.
We peek through the wooden doors of Funduq Kaat Smen, a dedicated honey souq that is being restored, and have coffee in bougie Foundouk Bazaar.
Then we descend into the steaming alleys of Souq Achabine, where workers queue at food stalls and pack closet-sized restaurants scoffing stewed beans, fried sardines and liver sandwiches. Noureddine insists I try maakouda, a delicious potato cake sandwich layered with egg, harissa and tomato sauce. To dive deeper into Fes' fantastic foodscape, take a tour with Fez Guided Tours, or a cooking class at Courtyard Kitchen.
One day, Abdel drives me up to Borj Sud and points out the white tombs of the Jewish cemetery in the Mellah; on another day, Inclusive Morocco arranges a visit to the pottery quarter, Ain Nokbi, just outside Bab Ftouh, where I find artisans kneading and throwing Fes' grey clay into a myriad bowls and pots, and a warehouse of artisans tirelessly cutting zellij tiles and placing them into intricate patterns with tweezers.
Nearby, at Traditional Arts, Mohammed is the fifth generation of his family to carry on the craft of filigreed metal work, all cut by hand to his father's exacting designs.
While back in the souk, the award-winning Anou Cooperative connects 600 artisan weavers to a digital marketplace where they can sell their work and retain 100 per cent of the proceeds.
When night falls, I return to sleep in a medina mansion, Dar Seffarine, beneath an elaborate painted ceiling, and shower in bathrooms wrapped in jewel-toned zellij. The owner, Alaa, is an architect and gives us a tour of some nearby riads, explaining the politics, philosophy and practicality behind medina architecture.
Then, I hare off to sit in the lantern-lit formal gardens of Jnan Sbil to hear Senegalese Sufis and Spanish flamenco dancers sing against a backdrop of croaking frogs and rustling leaves at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music.
It's beautiful and fascinating, and unlike anything I've ever seen. My neighbour, a Fassi graduate called Oussama, insists on buying me tea and delicious chicken pastilla in the interval.
In fact, I spend a whole week in Fes and find that I've barely scratched the surface – although I feel part of the family in a small way. The city is a Tardis that rewards those who slow down and make the effort to get beneath the surface.
You'll find the magic is in the moments that you spend sipping tea on a leather pouffe in the Chouara Tannery, learning that there's a thriving market in pigeon guano for the dye baths, or in the evenings you spend sitting on different rooftop terraces – Palais Amani, Hotel Sahrai and Riad Fes are some of the best – watching the sky turn the city blush pink, as the storks (rumoured to be cursed scholars) come home to roost.
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