Seven riveting must-see sights in the ‘Athens of Africa’

Seven wonders within Fes, Morocco

This alternative Moroccan city is better than mainstream Marrakesh. It has the world’s largest intact medieval city and pedestrian urban area – there’s nowhere else like it.

1 Make a grand entrance through Bab Boujloud

Stand outside this monumental gateway and through its Moorish horseshoe arch you’ll get your first glimpse of the medina (old town), as if you’re peeping through an outsized keyhole. Two minarets rise like exclamation marks, one usually crowned with a dishevelled stork’s nest.

The gateway’s outside has blue tiles, its medina-side green tiles, patterned with stars, flowers and Arabic calligraphy. Bab Boujloud fulfils the Aladdin fantasies of the French, who built it in 1913.

2 Find peace in Bou Inania Madrasa

Under one of the minarets (tiled in green) that you can spot from the gateway is this 14th-century madrasa or Islamic school, one of many in Fes but certainly the most gorgeous. The stucco upper walls and cedar eaves are elaborately decorated with geometric and floral motifs, while the lower walls are encased in ceramic tiles swirling with Koranic calligraphy. Sit on the cool marble floor, and you’ll find peace in the decorative geometry, away from the medina’s heat and hubbub.

3 Wander through Dar Glaoui Palace

You can’t see inside the royal palace (although it has impressive gates) so settle for this palace of a family that produced pashas and viziers, overlooked by many tourists in the south-west corner of the medina. Parts are crumbling away, but it has a great atmosphere, and the elaborate decorations are wonderful.

You can wander through the reception salons, harem, hammam and stables, and will eventually find two patios with carved wooden balconies hanging overhead like swallows’ nests.

4 Hold your nose at Chouwara Tannery

The most infamous sight in Fes was recently renovated and isn’t quite as awful as it once was, but remains an assault for its colour and stink. Mornings are most active. Here animal skins are cured with quicklime, cow urine and pigeon poop by men pounding with their feet, then are dyed in round vats of vivid yellow, red, green or blue. The process is medieval and will challenge both your olfactory nerves and attitude to voyeuristic tourism.

5 Remember history in Mellah

Created as a Jewish ghetto in the early 15th century, this quarter of “new” Fes beyond the medina has many traces of this old and once prosperous neighbourhood. It features large houses with interior patios – admire the Andalusian architecture, stucco work and ornate wood-carved balconies along rue de Merenides in particular. The Jewish cemetery, which features thousands of whitewashed tombs, looks like a modern art installation but is a mute reminder of a community long gone.

6 Get lost down a hundred alleys

Fes is less about big sights than the sum of its amazing parts. Alleys banded with occasional sunlight twist below houses and mosques and lead to archways, tiled fountains – or dead ends. This is also a living city where craftsmen have worked leather and brass for centuries, donkeys are used to carry goods, and shopkeepers sell spices, flyblown camel meat and slippers with turned-up toes. Get lost, and you’ll always come across something confronting or wonderful.

7 Admire the view from the Merenid Tombs

Head out of Bab Guissa, the citadel’s north-west gateway, and climb the hill to the ruins of the picturesque 14th-century mausoleums of the Merenid dynasty that once ruled Morocco. You can see over the whole old city and the upthrust fingers of its umpteen minarets. Best not linger after dark, but dusk is atmospheric thanks to swooping clouds of starlings, the tinkling of hillside sheep’s bells, the call to prayer, and appearance of town lights.

The writer travelled as a guest of By Prior Arrangement, which specialises in historical and cultural itineraries in Morocco. See bypriorarrangement.com