The Best Day Trips from Fez: Seven Escapes Worth the Early Start

Most people treat Fez as a two-day medina stop and move on. That is a waste of a very well-placed city: within a couple of hours you can reach Roman mosaics, an imperial capital, cedar forests full of monkeys and, if you are willing to commit to a long day, a mountain town painted blue.

Before you go

• Transport: grands taxis and private drivers cover most of these; trains work well for Meknes.
• Best months: leave early. Moroccan afternoons are hot and Moroccan sites close earlier than you expect — check current hours before committing.
• Pairing: several of these sit close together and are best combined rather than done alone.

1. Volubilis

The finest Roman site in Morocco and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, spread across a hillside of olive groves about an hour and a half away. The draw is the mosaic floors, still in place under the open sky, and the triumphal arch standing over an empty plain. Go early or late; there is very little shade.

2. Meknes

The imperial city Sultan Moulay Ismail built in the seventeenth century, and the most underrated of Morocco's four. The vast Bab Mansour gateway and the cavernous Heri es-Souani granaries and stables give a sense of scale that the Fez medina, for all its density, never does. Trains from Fez take under an hour.

3. Moulay Idriss Zerhoun

A whitewashed holy town tumbling over two hills, ten minutes from Volubilis and almost always visited with it. It is a place for walking, drinking mint tea and looking down over the valley rather than ticking off sights — which is exactly the point after a morning in the ruins.

4. Ifrane and the Middle Atlas cedar forests

Ifrane is Morocco's improbable alpine town, all steep roofs and tidy gardens, nicknamed Little Switzerland. The real reason to come is beyond it: the cedar forests around Azrou, where troops of Barbary macaques live wild among enormous trees. Please do not feed them.

5. Chefchaouen

The blue city, roughly four hours each way, which makes it a very long day. Do it only if you cannot spare a night; if you can, stay one. Nothing prepares you for the first turn into those washed indigo lanes.

6. Sefrou

A small walled town under an hour south, best known for its June cherry festival and for a medina that feels like Fez with the volume turned down. It is a good half-day when you want the atmosphere without the crowds.

7. Bhalil

A village of cave houses just outside Sefrou, where rooms cut into the rock are still lived in. Visits are usually arranged through local families and are entirely dependent on who is home, so treat it as a bonus stop rather than a fixed plan.

Tip: Volubilis, Moulay Idriss and Meknes form one natural loop and are best done in that order — ruins in the cool of the morning, the hill town for lunch, the imperial gates in the late afternoon light.