Fes: A Gentle Guide to Walking the Old City Downhill

Most travelers arrive in Fes braced for a battle. They have heard about the labyrinth, the thousands of alleys, the donkeys, the noise. All of that is real. But there is a quieter truth about this city that rarely makes the guidebooks: Fes is built on a slope, and if you walk it in the right direction, it carries you.

The old city, Fes el-Bali, sits in a bowl between hills in the Fès-Meknès region of northern Morocco. The great gates stand high on the rim; the ancient mosque and the craftsmen's squares lie at the bottom. Enter from the top and almost every step of your day is a gentle descent, with tea houses, shaded doorways and cool courtyards spaced along the way like benches on a long garden path.

This is a guide to Fes at that pace. Not a checklist, not a marathon, but one easy downhill morning at a time — with honest notes on the cobbles, the stairs and the months when heat makes it all harder than it needs to be.

A little history

Fes was founded at the end of the 8th century and grew quickly into one of the intellectual capitals of the Muslim world. In 859, a woman named Fatima al-Fihri, from a family that had come from Kairouan in Tunisia, endowed the mosque and teaching complex of al-Qarawiyyin. UNESCO and Guinness World Records recognise it as the oldest continuously operating university in the world — founded, remarkably, by a woman, and still in use today.

The city reached its height in the 13th and 14th centuries under the Marinid dynasty, when Fes replaced Marrakesh as the capital of the kingdom. Most of what visitors admire now dates from that era: madrasas lined with carved cedar and honeycomb plaster, fondouks where merchants once stabled animals downstairs and slept upstairs, fountains set into street corners for anyone who passed.

The Medina of Fez was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1981, and it remains one of the largest car-free urban areas anywhere in the world. That single fact explains both the magic of the place and the planning it asks of you: nothing with an engine is coming to collect you from the middle.

The medina of Fes el-Bali seen from the Borj Sud hill.

Walking Fes the easy way: downhill

The main artery of the old city is called Tala'a Kebira, which translates roughly as 'the great climb'. The name is a warning and an invitation at the same time. Walk it in one direction and it is a climb; walk it in the other and it is a slow, easy descent.

Start at the top, at the blue-tiled gate of Bab Bou Jeloud, where taxis can drop you right outside. From there the street runs roughly a kilometre and a half downhill through the heart of Fes el-Bali, past the madrasas, the coppersmiths and the spice stalls, to the area around the Qarawiyyin mosque. Finish lower still at Place R'cif, a square on the far side of the medina where taxis and buses can reach you again.

That is the whole trick, and it changes the city completely. Two accessible entry points, high and low, with gravity in between. Do it in the morning, let it take four or five hours with long stops, and ride back up to your riad rather than walking. If you lose your bearings, remember the slope itself: downhill leads into the heart of the medina, uphill leads back out to the gates.

A shopping street in the old medina of Fes.

What to see

Bou Inania Madrasa

Built around 1350 by the Marinid sultan Abu Inan, this is the most beautiful building in Fes that non-Muslim visitors may enter. It stands just inside Bab Bou Jeloud, near the top of the descent, so you meet it while you are still fresh. The courtyard is at ground level: marble underfoot, walls of carved stucco and zellij tilework, cedar screens darkened by six centuries. You can see everything worth seeing without climbing a step.

Al-Attarine Madrasa

Smaller, later and, to many eyes, even finer, al-Attarine sits deeper down the hill beside the spice market that gives it its name. Again the courtyard is the point, and again it is flat. The upper student cells are reached by narrow stairs that are easy to skip.

Al-Qarawiyyin

The great mosque and university is the still centre of the old city. Non-Muslims cannot enter the prayer hall, but the enormous doorways along the surrounding lanes are left open, and glimpses of the courtyard through them are one of the quiet pleasures of Fes. Walk the perimeter slowly rather than trying to find a vantage point.

Nejjarine Square and its fondouk

A gorgeously restored merchants' inn on a small square with a tiled fountain, now a museum of wooden arts and crafts. The ground floor alone is worth the visit, and there are cafés on the square where you can sit and watch carpenters at work.

The Chouara tannery

The famous vats of dye are seen from the terraces of leather shops that overlook them — which means two or three flights of steep, uneven stairs, often in warm air with a powerful smell. This is the one sight we suggest you consider skipping if stairs are difficult. Nobody will think less of you, and photographs of it are everywhere.

Jnan Sbil gardens

When the medina becomes too much, these 19th-century public gardens between Fes el-Bali and Fes el-Jdid are the antidote: level gravel paths, tall palms and bamboo, ponds, orange trees and a great deal of shade. It is the gentlest hour you will spend in Fes.

Fes el-Jdid and the palace gates

The 'new' city is only new by Fes standards — it is Marinid, from the 13th century. Here the streets are wider and flatter. On the broad square at Place des Alaouites stand the great brass doors of the Royal Palace, framed in blue and green tiles. The palace itself is closed to visitors, but the doors are a sight in their own right, and you can see them without walking more than a few minutes. The old Jewish quarter, the Mellah, with its wooden balconies, begins just behind.

A lane in the Fes medina; the tower on the left is the portal of the Andalusian Mosque.

A day trip nearby

The classic excursion from Fes runs west to three places within easy reach of each other, and it suits older travelers unusually well because most of the day is spent sitting in a car.

Volubilis is a Roman city set on an open hillside among olive groves, with triumphal arch, columns and mosaic floors still in place. It is roughly an hour and a half from Fes by road. The site is unshaded and the ground is rough underfoot, so go early and take a hat.

Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, the whitewashed holy town that spills down two hills, is only about ten minutes further on. It is steep — genuinely steep — so many visitors simply admire it from the viewpoint on the approach road rather than walking into it.

Meknes, the imperial city of Sultan Moulay Ismail, lies about 45 minutes to an hour from Fes and can be added on the way home. Its monumental gate, Bab Mansour, and the enormous square in front of it are flat and easy.

Allow eight to nine hours for all three. A private driver costs more than a group tour but lets you set the pace and cut anything you no longer feel like doing — money well spent at any age.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• Sleep inside the medina, near a gate. A riad close to Bab Bou Jeloud, Batha or R'cif means five or ten minutes of walking from the nearest taxi, not thirty. Ask the owner, before booking, exactly how far the door is from a point a car can reach, and whether porters can meet you with your luggage. Reputable riads arrange this as a matter of course.
• Ask how many stairs. Riads are old houses built around courtyards, and bedrooms are usually upstairs on steep, narrow flights with low handrails. Ground-floor rooms exist but are limited, so request one at the time of booking. Some riads in the Ville Nouvelle or modern hotels outside the walls have lifts, at the cost of a taxi ride to the old city each morning.
• The ground is the real challenge, not the distance. Expect worn cobbles, uneven stone, occasional steps and a central drainage channel. Wear shoes with a firm sole and good grip, and consider a walking pole. A wheeled suitcase is difficult; a soft bag a porter can carry is better.
• Alleys are narrow and shared with handcarts and mules. When you hear a shout of 'balak', step to the side and stand still. Let the traffic pass rather than hurrying.
• Take a licensed guide for your first day. Not because you cannot manage alone, but because a good guide will choose the downhill route, know where the clean toilets and calm cafés are, and quietly keep hawkers away. Book through your riad.
• Plan around the heat. July and August regularly reach the mid-30s Celsius and sometimes above 40. The alleys are shaded, which helps, but sightseeing should end by noon in high summer.
• Build in the rooftop. Almost every riad has a terrace. An hour up there with mint tea in the late afternoon, listening to the call to prayer roll across the rooftops, is as much a part of Fes as any monument.
• Carry small cash and a bottle of water. Cards are not widely used in the souks, and there are few shops selling water in the deepest lanes.

Narrow shaded streets in the medina of Fez.

What to eat

Fassi cooking is considered the most refined in Morocco, and the city takes that seriously. The dish to try is pastilla: a round pie of tissue-thin warqa pastry filled with slow-cooked pigeon or chicken, almonds and spiced egg, dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar. The sweet-savoury combination surprises people, and Fes is where it originated.

Harira, the tomato, lentil and chickpea soup, is thicker and more strongly seasoned here than elsewhere. Even better for a gentle stomach is bissara, a velvety purée of dried fava beans served hot with olive oil and cumin — a workman's breakfast, cheap, filling and easy to digest.

The local tagine tends towards deep, sweet onion sauces with saffron, ginger and preserved lemon. Street food is plentiful: brochettes grilled over charcoal, sfenj doughnuts fried in the morning, bowls of olives, dates and nougat in the covered markets.

Two practical notes. Choose busy places where food is cooked to order and served hot, and stick to bottled water. And if the heat has taken your appetite, a bowl of soup and a plate of oranges with cinnamon is a perfectly respectable Fassi dinner.

Musicians playing in a street of the old medina of Fes.

Getting there

Our verdict

Fes is not the easiest city in Morocco, and we would not pretend otherwise. The ground is uneven, the lanes are tight, and the medina asks something of your legs and your patience that Marrakesh or Essaouira do not.

But it gives back more than almost anywhere else in the country. This is a living medieval city, not a restored one — a place where the same families still hammer copper on the same square their great-grandfathers worked, where a thousand-year-old university holds classes, where bread goes to the communal oven every morning on a wooden board.

Go in spring or autumn. Stay inside the walls, near a gate. Walk downhill in the mornings and take taxis back up. Give yourself three unhurried days instead of two frantic ones. Do that, and Fes stops being the city everyone warned you about and becomes the one you talk about for years.

Evening light over the medina of Fes.

“In Fes you do not find your way; you simply follow the slope, and the old city delivers you to its heart.”

Photo credits

• Fes Medina Panoramic view: Rux , Spain, CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
• View of Medina of Fez: Yair Haklai, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Flickr - stringer bel - the old medina in Fes, Morocco: Annabel Symington, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Fes medina 033 0A: Rumlik, CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
• Medina of Fez 5: Dieglop, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Old medina 1: Hananeboukili, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Une vue un soir à Fes: Stéphane Maroc, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons