One Day in Fez: The Medina at Speed

Fez does not reward speed, which is exactly why a one-day plan needs a route. Fes el-Bali is the largest car-free urban area in the world and thousands of lanes deep; without a spine to follow you will spend your only day going in circles and calling it atmosphere.

Key facts

• The spine: Talaa Kebira, the long descending street from Bab Boujloud, links most of what follows.
• Access: active mosques, including the Al-Qarawiyyin mosque, are not open to non-Muslims. Several madrasas are.
• A guide helps. For one day, an official guide arranged through your riad genuinely saves time.
• Wear real shoes. The medina is steep, cobbled and occasionally shared with mules.

08:00 — In through the Blue Gate

Enter at Bab Boujloud, blue on the outside and green on the inside, and start down Talaa Kebira while the street is still waking up: bread going to the communal ovens, shutters coming up, the first mint tea.

09:00 — Bou Inania Madrasa

A few minutes in stands the fourteenth-century Bou Inania, the grandest of the city's religious colleges and one of the few open to visitors. Carved cedar, marble and zellij, and a courtyard that repays standing still in.

10:30 — The heart of the medina

Continue down to the Al-Qarawiyyin complex, founded in the ninth century by Fatima al-Fihri and widely described as the world's oldest continuously operating university. Non-Muslim visitors can look in through the doorways and should — then take in the Al-Attarine Madrasa nearby, and the extraordinary carved cedar facade of the Nejjarine Fountain, with its woodworking museum alongside.

12:00 — Chouara Tannery

The oldest and largest of Fez's tanneries, worked in stone vats that have barely changed in centuries. You view it from the terraces of the leather shops that surround it; someone will hand you a sprig of mint at the door, and you will understand why within seconds.

13:00 — Pastilla for lunch

Fez is the home of pastilla, the sweet-savoury pie of shredded poultry, almonds, cinnamon and paper-thin warqa pastry under a dusting of icing sugar. It is a proper sit-down dish, so let lunch take its time.

15:00 — Souks and the Batha quarter

Spend the flat afternoon hours on the craft souks — brass, leather, ceramics, weaving — and on the museums around Batha, where the crowds thin considerably.

17:30 — Merenid Tombs at sunset

Take a taxi up to the ruined Merenid Tombs on the hillside north of the medina. From here the whole city lies below you in a bowl, and the call to prayer rises out of it from every direction at once. This is the moment people remember.

19:30 — Dinner in a riad

Eat where you sleep. Fez's riads run some of the best kitchens in the city, and after a day in the lanes, the walk home is thirty seconds.

Tip: Drop a pin on your riad and screenshot the surrounding lanes before you set out. GPS behaves erratically between medina walls, and a saved image works when the signal does not.