Fès el-Bali: Getting Delightfully Lost in Morocco's Medieval Medina

Fès el-Bali — the old city of Fès — was founded in the 9th century and grew into one of the great cities of the medieval Islamic world, a centre of scholarship, trade, and craftsmanship that at its height rivalled Cairo and Baghdad. The medina, which covers 280 hectares and is home to around 150,000 people, is the largest car-free urban area in the world — the streets are too narrow for vehicles, and goods are transported by donkey and handcart as they have been for a thousand years. The University of al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 AD, is the oldest continuously operating university in the world.

The Chouara Tannery, visible from the terraces of the leather shops that surround it, is one of the most extraordinary sights in Morocco — a courtyard of stone vats filled with dyes of vivid red, yellow, green, and brown, in which workers stand knee-deep in the liquid, treading the hides with their feet. The tanning process has changed little since the 11th century: the hides are first soaked in a mixture of cow urine, quicklime, and pigeon dung to soften them, then transferred to the dye vats, then dried on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. The smell is powerful, and the leather shops provide sprigs of mint to hold under your nose.

The Bou Inania Madrasa, built between 1350 and 1357 by the Marinid Sultan Bou Inan, is the finest example of Marinid architecture in Morocco — a building of extraordinary refinement, with walls of carved stucco, zellige tilework, and carved cedarwood rising from a central courtyard with a marble fountain. The madrasa was a residential college for students of the al-Qarawiyyin University, and its cells — small rooms opening onto the upper galleries — housed hundreds of students at a time. It is now open to non-Muslim visitors and is one of the most beautiful interiors in North Africa.

The souqs of Fès are organised by trade, as they have been since the medieval period — the coppersmiths in one street, the weavers in another, the spice merchants in a third. The Souk el-Attarine, the spice market near the al-Qarawiyyin mosque, is a sensory overload of colour and fragrance — sacks of saffron, cumin, and ras el hanout, bundles of dried herbs, and the sweet smell of argan oil. The Souk el-Henna, where women come to buy henna paste for body decoration, is quieter and more intimate, with the walls of the surrounding buildings painted in the traditional blue of Fès.

Getting lost in the medina is not a failure of navigation but an essential part of the experience. The streets of Fès el-Bali follow no logical plan — they were laid out over centuries according to the needs of the moment, and the result is a labyrinth that defeats even experienced visitors. The best approach is to hire a guide for the first day to understand the basic geography, then to explore independently, following your instincts and accepting that you will end up somewhere unexpected. The medina is safe, the people are generally friendly, and the worst that can happen is that you find yourself in a neighbourhood you didn't plan to visit.

Moroccan cuisine reaches its most refined expression in Fès, where the cooking traditions of the Andalusian refugees who settled here after the fall of Granada in 1492 blended with the existing Berber and Arab traditions to create a cuisine of extraordinary complexity and subtlety. The pastilla — a pie of pigeon meat, almonds, and eggs in a paper-thin pastry dusted with cinnamon and sugar — is the signature dish of Fès, a combination of sweet and savoury that seems improbable but is one of the great dishes of the world. The best place to eat it is in a traditional riad restaurant in the medina.

The best time to visit Fès is in spring (March-May) or autumn (September-November), when the temperatures are comfortable for walking and the light is at its most beautiful. The summer months can be extremely hot — temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees Celsius in July and August — and the narrow streets of the medina trap the heat. The Fès Festival of World Sacred Music, held in June, brings musicians from around the world to perform in the historic spaces of the medina and is one of the finest music festivals in Africa. Staying in a riad — a traditional courtyard house converted into a guesthouse — is the most atmospheric accommodation option and provides a base within the medina itself.