Travelling to Fes can easily feel like travelling into the past. Pass through one of the monumental gates of its medina and the first question is almost inevitable: are we really still in the twenty-first century?

There are sensible ways to visit Fes for the first time, and hiring a local guide is certainly one of them. Fes el-Bali is not the kind of old town where a map, a few street signs and a vague sense of direction will reliably get you from one landmark to another. It is a dense urban organism of narrow alleys, workshops, markets, religious buildings, dead ends, covered passages and sudden open spaces, and during my first walk through it I was perfectly happy to have somebody in front of me who knew where he was going.

The problem came later. A few hours after the guide had safely returned me to the hotel, I realised that I had seen an enormous amount of Fes but had mostly followed somebody else's route through it. He had chosen the streets, the workshops and the places where we stopped. I had observed, tasted, smelled and photographed, but I had never really needed to know where I was.

That began to bother me. Curiosity mixed with stubbornness: I wanted to know whether I could find my way through the same city alone, I wanted to experience the medina without somebody else deciding every turn, and I simply wanted to go back. So instead of enjoying the comfort of my upgraded suite, I downloaded an offline map, left most of my cash in the hotel and started walking toward Fes el-Bali again.

That second visit would become the part of Fes I remembered most clearly.

But first I had to get to Morocco.

Bab Bou Jeloud at dusk — the monumental gateway into Fes el-Bali, where the modern city seems to end and another century begins.
Bab Bou Jeloud at dusk — the monumental gateway into Fes el-Bali, where the modern city seems to end and another century begins.

One more pastel de nata before Morocco

The journey began on 28 December 2018 in Lisbon, after a night that barely deserved to be called one. My flight from Venice had arrived late, and by the time I reached the hotel it was around one in the morning. Spending the next morning in bed would still have felt like wasting Lisbon, so I went out for a short walk through a city I already knew.

There was also a culinary objective: pastel de nata. The little puff-pastry tart filled with egg-based custard remains one of Lisbon's more convincing reasons for repeated visits, and at the time the Diners lounge at the airport had the additional advantage of serving them in unlimited quantities. I could therefore leave the city, pass security and continue eating Portugal until boarding.

Lisbon Airport itself had already become one of those airports I rather liked, and after very little sleep I was perfectly happy to spend some time there. Then I saw the aircraft that would take me to Fes.

It was one of the smallest passenger planes I had flown on until then. Small aircraft do not particularly improve my relationship with turbulence, and the combination of a compact cabin and sudden movement is not something I actively seek while travelling. Fortunately, the flight itself was uneventful.

A few hours later, Europe had disappeared beneath us and my first encounter with Morocco was about to begin.

The small TAP Express aircraft that brought me from Lisbon to Fes — a quiet arrival on the edge of my first Morocco.
The small TAP Express aircraft that brought me from Lisbon to Fes — a quiet arrival on the edge of my first Morocco.

A €50 lesson at the airport

Fes Airport was small, quiet and, at least that afternoon, surprisingly empty. There were only a few aircraft outside and a visible security presence inside, but immigration formalities were completed quickly. My first real problem was much more mundane: money.

I needed cash, particularly for the hotel transfer, and in 2018 I assumed that cash would remain essential for much of the trip. At the airport I found what appeared to be the easiest solution, a counter that could provide cash against a credit card. Worried that getting money later might be complicated, I withdrew the equivalent of around €300.

The fee was approximately €50.

It was an impressive piece of financial stupidity, made more irritating by the later discovery that ordinary ATMs were readily available in the city and charged vastly less. My first practical lesson in Morocco therefore cost roughly one sixth of the money I had withdrawn.

Finding the driver was the next challenge. Whenever I had previously booked an airport transfer through a hotel, the choreography had been reassuringly predictable: leave customs, find somebody holding a sign with my name and get into the car. Fes had apparently decided that such obvious procedures were unnecessary.

There was no driver with a sign. Outside the terminal I saw several taxis, but their drivers appeared more interested in a board game than in newly arrived passengers. Eventually one of the men offered me a ride. I mentioned the name of my hotel and another man appeared almost immediately with a piece of paper bearing my name.

Apparently my transfer had been waiting for me all along. I simply had not understood where.

The vehicle itself was large and comfortable, closer to what European hotels would happily market as a limousine transfer than to the older local taxis parked outside. The price was roughly €20, certainly more than a petit taxi would have cost, but after looking at some of the cars around the airport I felt no particular urge to test how much money I could save.

My driver spent much of the journey speaking very loudly into his mobile phone. Between calls, however, he repeatedly checked whether I was comfortable and whether everything was fine. Loud, distracted and extremely polite turned out not to be mutually exclusive categories.

Outside the window came my first glimpse of Morocco. The landscape was dry, with low buildings scattered along the road. Cars were relatively scarce and many looked considerably older than those I was used to seeing in Western Europe. People sat outside in traditional clothing, talking and laughing in surroundings that, to a newly arrived visitor, looked strikingly modest.

That first drive was also an early warning against drawing easy conclusions. What I saw from the car as poverty or simplicity did not translate into people who looked unhappy. They appeared relaxed, social and entirely at home in a landscape I had not yet learned how to read.

Then the hotel gates opened, and Morocco changed again.

Morocco behind Marriott gates

The Fes Marriott Hotel Jnan Palace was a dramatic contrast to everything I had seen on the road from the airport. I was already loyal to Marriott, and at around €100 per night the hotel had seemed like an obvious choice. It looked and felt properly luxurious, with spacious public areas, gardens, traditional decorative elements and polished service.

My upgrade was to a duplex suite, with the living room on one level and the bedroom on another, and enough space to feel slightly excessive for one person. Fruit and Moroccan pastries were waiting as a welcome amenity.

Fes Marriott Hotel Jnan Palace — the polished, five-star version of Morocco waiting behind the gates.
Fes Marriott Hotel Jnan Palace — the polished, five-star version of Morocco waiting behind the gates.
My upgraded duplex suite at the Fes Marriott — considerably more space than one person needed, and a very comfortable base before facing the medina.
My upgraded duplex suite at the Fes Marriott — considerably more space than one person needed, and a very comfortable base before facing the medina.

My original plan had been to leave almost immediately and explore Fes. The concierge was not enthusiastic. He advised me not to enter the medina alone late in the day and suggested that I first see it in daylight, preferably with a local guide. He did not tell me that going would be dangerous; he simply made waiting until the next day sound sufficiently sensible that I changed the plan.

The obvious replacement was a hammam.

Traditional Moroccan hammams historically function as public baths and social spaces, built around washing, steam and vigorous exfoliation rather than the scented serenity that luxury hotels usually attach to the word. A few days later in Marrakech I would experience something much closer to that communal tradition. The Marriott offered the controlled five-star interpretation: privacy, silence, polished facilities and nobody unexpectedly participating in my personal hygiene.

The basic process was still recognisable. There was serious scrubbing followed by massage, and by the end I felt considerably cleaner and more functional than when I had entered. Interestingly, I would later conclude that the more traditional hammam in Marrakech probably did the actual job even better, but after a late flight to Lisbon, a short night, a morning walk and another flight to Morocco, the private version was precisely what I needed.

Dinner followed in the hotel's traditional restaurant, which served both Moroccan and Lebanese food. Since I had just arrived in Morocco, ordering Lebanese seemed almost morally weak, so I chose couscous, followed by Moroccan sweets and mint tea.

The setting did considerably more for me than the couscous. The restaurant was richly decorated, music reinforced the sense of place and the mint tea arrived with all the visual ritual expected of it, but the main course left me surprisingly indifferent. Perhaps I simply had not adjusted to the flavours yet. The pastries were more persuasive.

Either way, I was exhausted enough to postpone all further gastronomic conclusions until the next day.

My first couscous in Morocco — beautifully presented at the Marriott, though the setting impressed me more than the dish itself.
My first couscous in Morocco — beautifully presented at the Marriott, though the setting impressed me more than the dish itself.
Moroccan mint tea at the Marriott — the couscous may not have convinced me, but the ritual of tea certainly did.
Moroccan mint tea at the Marriott — the couscous may not have convinced me, but the ritual of tea certainly did.

A city made of several cities

Fes itself had to wait until the afternoon because I spent the morning on an excursion to Meknes and Moulay Idriss. Those places belong to other stories, but they also gave me my first sense of how varied Morocco could be within a relatively small area. By early afternoon I was back at the Marriott, where I freshened up and met the driver again. This time a local guide joined us.

Only then did Fes properly begin.

Understanding the city is easier if one first abandons the idea that there is a single Fes. The historical heart is Fes el-Bali, the ancient medina. Beside it lies Fes el-Jdid, literally "New Fes", although it dates from the thirteenth century. Farther out is Ville Nouvelle, created under the French Protectorate and built according to an entirely different urban logic, with broad avenues, modern blocks and much more generous space.

The origins of Fes reach back to the Idrisid period. The first settlement is associated with Idris I in 789, while Idris II established another settlement on the opposite bank in the early ninth century. Over time the two developed into the urban core we now know as Fes el-Bali. The city later became one of Morocco's great political, commercial, intellectual and religious centres and reached a particularly important phase under the Marinids in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Fes el-Jdid was founded in 1276, while the older medina continued to develop around religious institutions, markets, workshops and densely packed residential quarters.

Political power eventually moved elsewhere. Rabat became the capital in 1912 during the French Protectorate, but Fes retained something perhaps more interesting than political primacy: a historical urban fabric that remained alive instead of becoming a preserved shell.

I did not know most of that history when I first arrived. What I noticed was much more immediate: modern Fes seemed perfectly understandable from the car, while the medina looked as if it operated according to rules from another age.

The medina has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1981, but that designation alone does not explain what makes it extraordinary. It is not simply an unusually large collection of old buildings. Houses, mosques, madrasas, shops, workshops, food markets and traditional trades still occupy a street pattern whose basic logic developed centuries before modern traffic and urban planning.

When I entered it for the first time, my reaction was simple: I wondered whether I had somehow walked into the wrong century.

Inside Fes el-Bali, the medieval street pattern is not preserved as a museum piece — it is still filled with markets, workshops and everyday life.
Inside Fes el-Bali, the medieval street pattern is not preserved as a museum piece — it is still filled with markets, workshops and everyday life.

Into Fes el-Bali

Calling Fes el-Bali an "old town" is technically correct but psychologically misleading. In much of Europe, an old town usually means a compact historical centre: pedestrian streets, a church or cathedral, a central square, cafés, restored façades and enough signs to reassure the visitor that somebody has anticipated their presence.

Fes is something else entirely.

The streets narrow until two people passing each other can become a logistical negotiation. Alleys turn, divide, descend, disappear under buildings and reopen in places where orientation seems to have little relationship with geometry. Workshops flow into shops, shops into food stalls, residential doors appear beside religious buildings, and people, animals, merchandise and handcarts all compete for the same limited space.

At first the entire system looks impossible. After a while, it becomes obvious that the city knows exactly what it is doing. It is the visitor who does not.

Our first stops centred on food. Butchers displayed meat in forms considerably more explicit than those normally seen in European supermarkets: ordinary cuts alongside heads, offal and animals presented with very little effort to hide where meat actually comes from. Camel, sheep and chicken were all part of the visual landscape.

A butcher’s stall in Fes el-Bali — meat, camel heads and everyday commerce displayed with none of the visual distance a European supermarket usually provides.
A butcher’s stall in Fes el-Bali — meat, camel heads and everyday commerce displayed with none of the visual distance a European supermarket usually provides.

Nearby, vegetables, spices and prepared food produced a completely different palette of colours and smells. Tiny kitchens and stalls were preparing dishes almost directly in the flow of pedestrians. Some looked excellent. Others looked excellent until I began considering how much of the rest of my Moroccan itinerary depended on a functioning digestive system.

I wanted to taste things, but I was also afraid to taste them, and for a while fear was winning comfortably.

My guide eventually decided that this was ridiculous and persuaded me to try harira. Like many traditional dishes, it does not have a single immutable recipe, but Moroccan versions commonly combine tomatoes, pulses such as chickpeas and lentils, herbs and spices, often with flour or vermicelli and sometimes meat. None of that worried me.

The spoon did.

We sat at a small table with several locals. The bowl arrived with bread and cutlery that did not inspire enormous confidence. The people around me showed me that the bread should be dipped into the soup, which seemed a useful way of reducing my dependence on the spoon.

So I followed them.

The harira itself did not become a major culinary revelation, but the situation mattered more than the recipe. Until then, I had been observing Fes from behind my guide. Sitting at that table, even briefly and superficially, I was participating in something ordinary rather than merely photographing it.

And, importantly, I survived.

Harira in Fes — simple, thick, heavily seasoned and served with bread, while I remained considerably more suspicious of the spoon than of the soup.
Harira in Fes — simple, thick, heavily seasoned and served with bread, while I remained considerably more suspicious of the spoon than of the soup.

My guide then introduced me to something requiring considerably less courage: kaab el ghazal. The Arabic name is literally closer to "gazelle's ankle" or "gazelle's heel", although the crescent-shaped almond pastry is better known through the French cornes de gazelle and the English "gazelle horns".

Whatever part of the gazelle one prefers, it was excellent.

By then I was beginning to wonder how many other things fear had already stopped me from tasting.

Carpets, craftsmen and salesmanship

Food gradually gave way to crafts and shopping, and no guided walk through a Moroccan medina would be complete without carpets.

The carpet shop occupied several floors, which was itself surprising because the building looked much smaller from the narrow street outside. Once inside, the commercial performance began. Carpets appeared in rapid succession, each followed by explanations of materials, weaving techniques, patterns, quality and origin. One carpet was replaced by another, then another, until almost every horizontal surface seemed to require additional textiles.

The merchants were very good at what they did. They also understood relatively quickly that I was not going to buy a carpet. This did not reduce their enthusiasm, and eventually I was shown a demonstration of traditional weaving, which I genuinely enjoyed.

Inside a carpet shop in Fes el-Bali — layers of colour, pattern and craftsmanship, all part of a sales performance whose enthusiasm did not depend on whether I was actually going to buy anything.
Inside a carpet shop in Fes el-Bali — layers of colour, pattern and craftsmanship, all part of a sales performance whose enthusiasm did not depend on whether I was actually going to buy anything.
Traditional carpet weaving in Fes — one of the few sales demonstrations I was genuinely happy to stop and watch.
Traditional carpet weaving in Fes — one of the few sales demonstrations I was genuinely happy to stop and watch.

The whole experience reminded me of a carpet shop I had visited years earlier in Istanbul. There too, the salesman had spent a remarkable amount of time explaining carpets despite knowing perfectly well that I was unlikely to purchase one. I eventually asked him why.

His answer was simple: perhaps I would not buy a carpet that day, but if I ever wanted one, I would remember him.

He was right. I still do, and I still think I might eventually like a proper carpet.

From carpets we moved to metalwork: trays, lamps, plates and decorative objects, many of them hammered or shaped by hand in workshops directly connected to the retail spaces. The medina is full of trades whose production and sales functions remain physically intertwined. The object in front of you may quite literally be made a few metres from where it is sold.

A metalworker’s shop in Fes el-Bali — copper pans, tools and workshop clutter spilling directly into the street, with production and sales still sharing the same few square metres.
A metalworker’s shop in Fes el-Bali — copper pans, tools and workshop clutter spilling directly into the street, with production and sales still sharing the same few square metres.

Religious architecture appeared continuously between markets and workshops. Fes contains some of Morocco's most important mosques and madrasas, including the Qarawiyyin complex and a number of Marinid educational institutions. Most functioning mosques in Morocco are not normally open to non-Muslim visitors, while some historic madrasas can be visited, so much of the religious architecture I encountered had to be appreciated from doors, entrances and surrounding streets.

At the time I found this surprising because I had visited major mosques in Istanbul without difficulty. Later, a guide in Marrakech offered me his own explanation, involving both the religious function of the buildings and the need to protect them from inappropriate tourist behaviour. I never established whether his explanation represented official policy or simply his personal interpretation, so I prefer to leave it as what it was: something a guide told me, rather than a universal explanation.

A glimpse into Fes’s religious architecture — horseshoe arches, zellij, carved plaster and a courtyard that could only be appreciated from the threshold.
A glimpse into Fes’s religious architecture — horseshoe arches, zellij, carved plaster and a courtyard that could only be appreciated from the threshold.

One younger hand

The next commercial stop involved argan oil.

Argan is associated primarily with south-western Morocco, where the argan tree and the traditional knowledge surrounding its cultivation and oil production form an important part of local culture. What I was seeing in Fes was therefore not a native Fassi tradition but a demonstration of one of Morocco's best-known products.

Near the entrance, traditional production methods were demonstrated before we were moved into a far more polished sales space. The contrast was impressive: outside, the atmosphere suggested craft and tradition; inside, everything was immaculate, products were beautifully arranged and the staff could easily have been launching cosmetics in Paris or Milan.

I had absolutely no intention of buying beauty products.

Someone nevertheless persuaded me to try pure argan oil on one hand and compare it with the other. To my irritation, the treated hand did appear smoother and perhaps even slightly younger.

For several minutes I therefore possessed one hand that seemed to be ageing more successfully than the rest of me.

Whether the explanation was argan oil, simple moisturisation, lighting or highly competent sales psychology did not matter very much. The demonstration had achieved its purpose: I was impressed despite myself.

Argan oil in Fes — a polished shop built around a tradition from south-western Morocco, complete with a demonstration persuasive enough to make one of my hands look younger than the other.
Argan oil in Fes — a polished shop built around a tradition from south-western Morocco, complete with a demonstration persuasive enough to make one of my hands look younger than the other.

Why they give you mint at the tannery

Then came the place I had most wanted to see: the Chouara tannery.

At the entrance someone handed me a sprig of mint. I initially interpreted it as another piece of tourist theatre, something decorative and photogenic that would help create a suitably exotic impression.

Then we climbed toward the terrace.

The mint immediately became emergency equipment.

The smell was spectacularly bad. Not interestingly bad, not authentically earthy, not the kind of smell one pretends to appreciate because it proves that one is an experienced traveller. It simply stank.

I held the mint under my nose and developed instant respect for whoever had thought of distributing it.

Then I looked down.

The Chouara tannery from above — a dense patchwork of stone vats where one of Fes’s oldest working crafts is still part of the living medina.
The Chouara tannery from above — a dense patchwork of stone vats where one of Fes’s oldest working crafts is still part of the living medina.

Below the terrace were the stone vats I had associated with Fes long before arriving. Workers moved between them, hides were being processed and coloured, and the surrounding buildings pressed tightly around the entire production space.

The view was extraordinary because it was simultaneously picturesque and industrial. This was not a reconstructed historical demonstration in which actors performed a disappeared craft for tourists. Leather production remained part of the economic life of the medina. Methods and materials have changed over time, but the continuity of the place is real: leather is still being processed in an area associated with the trade for generations.

Workers at the Chouara tannery — a working landscape of vats, hides and manual labour that makes the place feel industrial rather than merely picturesque.
Workers at the Chouara tannery — a working landscape of vats, hides and manual labour that makes the place feel industrial rather than merely picturesque.

After admiring the vats, we were naturally introduced to the retail side of the operation. A merchant explained the leather, the production process and the supposed durability of the finished goods. Jackets and bags appeared. The material itself felt excellent.

The designs were another matter.

A significant number of the jackets looked as though they had been waiting very patiently for fashion to return to the period when I was in primary school.

It still has not.

I had seen leather clothing in Turkey that appealed to me more, although I had little doubt that some of the Moroccan pieces would probably survive long enough to become family heirlooms. The salesman tried hard. My wallet remained closed.

For me, however, the tannery was the visual climax of the guided tour. Its entrance had been so inconspicuous, buried within the structure of the medina, that I doubted I would ever have found the viewpoint on my own. That alone justified having a guide.

Back at the hotel, something was missing

After leaving the medina, we found the driver and began heading back toward the hotel. Before returning, I asked to stop at the railway station because I needed a ticket to Rabat and assumed that purchasing it might require my guide's linguistic assistance.

It did not. The man at the counter spoke enough English for the transaction to be completely straightforward, so while I was there I bought not only the ticket to Rabat but also the other railway tickets I expected to need during the rest of the trip.

Fes railway station — where I discovered that travelling across Morocco by train would be considerably easier than I had expected.
Fes railway station — where I discovered that travelling across Morocco by train would be considerably easier than I had expected.

Back at the Marriott, I paid the guide and driver, thanked them and said goodbye. Hiring them had clearly been the right decision. Without the guide I would have missed workshops, explanations, hidden viewpoints and probably the tannery itself.

Yet once they left, I became restless. I had spent hours inside the medina without ever needing to understand how it fitted together. The chaos that had initially intimidated me had also become attractive, and I wanted to know whether I could go back in without somebody choosing the route for me.

Because roaming charges in Morocco were absurd, I downloaded an offline map. I deliberately carried little cash, partly because I had no intention of buying anything substantial and partly because wandering through an unfamiliar medina with an unnecessarily full wallet seemed stupid.

Then I left the Marriott and started walking.

From modern Fes into the old city

The route from the hotel toward Fes el-Bali turned out to be useful in its own right because it allowed me to watch the city change gradually instead of appearing suddenly through the window of a car.

I first crossed parts of Ville Nouvelle, with its broad avenues, greenery and buildings shaped by the French Protectorate. Avenue Hassan II and Avenue de la Liberté belonged to a city whose spatial logic was entirely familiar: long sightlines, traffic, pavements and enough open space to understand immediately where one was going.

From there I moved toward the old walls, continued near Bab Jdid and followed Avenue du Batha. The closer I came to Fes el-Bali, the more the urban scale changed. Jnan Sbil gardens provided one final stretch of ordered greenery before I reached the area around Bab Bou Jeloud.

Avenue Hassan II in Ville Nouvelle — broad, ordered and almost impossibly spacious after the compressed streets of Fes el-Bali.
Avenue Hassan II in Ville Nouvelle — broad, ordered and almost impossibly spacious after the compressed streets of Fes el-Bali.
Approaching Fes el-Bali — the broad avenues of the modern city give way to old walls, weathered façades and a completely different urban rhythm.
Approaching Fes el-Bali — the broad avenues of the modern city give way to old walls, weathered façades and a completely different urban rhythm.

Bab Bou Jeloud, with its blue and green tile decoration, looks old enough to convince a visitor that generations of medieval travellers must have passed through exactly the same monumental gate. In fact, the gateway in its present form dates from 1913.

That makes it one of Fes's more entertaining historical illusions: the city behind it is many centuries older than the entrance through which most visitors symbolically enter it.

For me, the gate marked a very real change. Outside, the city still behaved in ways I understood. Once through it, the geometry, scale, traffic and rhythm of everyday life changed almost immediately.

The market outside Bab Bou Jeloud — everyday shopping, improvised stalls and local life gathered beneath one of Fes’s most monumental entrances.
The market outside Bab Bou Jeloud — everyday shopping, improvised stalls and local life gathered beneath one of Fes’s most monumental entrances.

Before entering, I spent some time observing the area around the gate. My first instinct was to compare it with Jemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakech, but the atmosphere was completely different. There were relatively few tourists. Groups of local people sat together, talked, played games and gathered around musicians. Food and ordinary goods were sold without the sense that everything was being staged for visitors.

Most remarkably, very few people appeared interested in me.

After some of the more aggressively commercial encounters already experienced in Morocco, being largely ignored was surprisingly pleasant.

Then I crossed the gate.

That part did not last.

Fes without a guide

Within a very short distance, several self-appointed guides began offering their services. Some merely asked once or twice. Others were considerably more persistent, and a few had already decided that my refusal was simply the beginning of a negotiation.

This was exactly the situation I had been warned about, so I kept walking until they eventually stopped following.

I followed Talaa Kebira, one of the main arteries descending from Bab Bou Jeloud deeper into the medina. Food stalls, spices, clothing, everyday goods, workshops and religious buildings appeared one after another. The street was busy enough to feel chaotic but, after the guided visit earlier that day, some of the spatial relationships had already begun to make sense.

I passed the area around the Zaouia of Moulay Idriss II, associated with the ruler central to the early development of Fes, and continued through sections containing some of the city's famous madrasas and the Qarawiyyin complex.

Talaa Kebira in Fes el-Bali — vegetables, spices, shoppers and improvised awnings compressing everyday life into one narrow artery of the medina.
Talaa Kebira in Fes el-Bali — vegetables, spices, shoppers and improvised awnings compressing everyday life into one narrow artery of the medina.

Al-Qarawiyyin is frequently described in tourist literature, and even by major heritage institutions, as the oldest university in the world. The statement depends heavily on what one means by the modern term "university", so I prefer the less spectacular but historically safer description: for centuries, the mosque and scholarly institution around it made Fes one of the great centres of Islamic learning in North Africa.

What struck me more than any superlative was that it did not present itself primarily as a monument. It still belonged to the functioning city around it.

That distinction ran through the entire medina. Fes did not feel preserved in the way historical districts often are. Buildings had not been frozen at some ideal aesthetic moment for tourists. The city was old, worn, adapted, occasionally chaotic and continuously used.

That was why the feeling of travelling into the past was so strong. Not because nothing had changed, but because so much had survived while continuing to function.

I eventually retraced part of Talaa Kebira, crossed toward the roughly parallel Talaa Seghira and worked my way slowly back in the direction of Bab Bou Jeloud.

Of course I got lost occasionally. It would almost have been disappointing not to.

Getting lost in Fes el-Bali was almost inevitable — but in alleys like this, finding the way again was part of the experience.
Getting lost in Fes el-Bali was almost inevitable — but in alleys like this, finding the way again was part of the experience.

But I also found my route again without assistance, and that small achievement mattered more than it objectively should have. Without the guide, I began noticing where people stopped, which shops seemed aimed mainly at locals, how one trade gradually gave way to another and how an intersection that had seemed completely incomprehensible on first encounter became surprisingly logical once I had passed through it twice.

I had not discovered a secret, more authentic Fes. I had simply started finding my own way through the same one.

The “new” Fes from 1276

After leaving Fes el-Bali through Bab Bou Jeloud, I continued toward Fes el-Jdid.

The name means "New Fes", which becomes slightly absurd once one remembers that the district was founded in 1276. Compared with the older medina, however, it did feel more spacious and easier to read. Shops and small restaurants remained everywhere, but the commercial pressure on tourists seemed lower. More of what I saw was clearly serving ordinary local life rather than visitors.

People bought practical things, snack bars were busy and streets functioned without constantly attempting to sell me a carpet, leather jacket or bottle of oil. It was another reminder that the historic parts of Fes were not one homogeneous tourist zone.

Eventually I reached Dar al-Makhzen, the enormous Royal Palace complex. It is not open to the public, so the practical result for the ordinary visitor is familiar: after making your way toward one of the city's most important royal sites, you mostly photograph the gates.

Fortunately, the gates are spectacular.

The gates of Dar al-Makhzen after dark — one of Fes el-Jdid’s most spectacular façades, even if the Royal Palace itself remains firmly off-limits.
The gates of Dar al-Makhzen after dark — one of Fes el-Jdid’s most spectacular façades, even if the Royal Palace itself remains firmly off-limits.

The large brass doors, framed by elaborate zellij and carved decoration, provide one of the most recognisable images of Fes el-Jdid. I walked onto the large square in front of the complex and was almost immediately approached by police officers.

My first thought was that I had done something wrong.

Technically, I had.

Part of the area was restricted, and they explained that I needed to move elsewhere. What surprised me was the tone. They spoke good English, calmly showed me where I was allowed to walk and, once the correction was made, smiled, welcomed me to Morocco and wished me a pleasant stay.

The interaction lasted only a few minutes, but I remember it more clearly than many formally important monuments.

From there I followed Avenue Moulay Youssef and eventually returned toward Avenue Hassan II. Darkness had begun to settle over the city, traffic was becoming heavier and my legs were delivering increasingly clear information about the length of the day.

By then I had walked enough.

Night traffic in modern Fes — taxis, buses, neon and headlights, a sharp contrast to the medieval medina I had been wandering through only hours earlier.
Night traffic in modern Fes — taxis, buses, neon and headlights, a sharp contrast to the medieval medina I had been wandering through only hours earlier.

Dinner without principles

Back at the Marriott, I returned to the same restaurant where I had eaten couscous the previous evening.

This time I abandoned principle.

The waiter recommended a Lebanese kebab. On my first evening I had rejected the idea because eating Lebanese food immediately after arriving in Morocco had seemed somehow wrong. After an afternoon with a guide and several more hours walking alone through Fes, I no longer felt obliged to prove anything through dinner.

The kebab was excellent. Better, in fact, than the couscous.

Lebanese kebab at the Marriott — the dinner that finally convinced me to stop forcing culinary authenticity just because I was in Morocco.
Lebanese kebab at the Marriott — the dinner that finally convinced me to stop forcing culinary authenticity just because I was in Morocco.

There may be a useful travel lesson there about forcing culinary authenticity simply because geography demands it, but I chose not to overanalyse the situation. I ate, returned to the suite and collapsed with the satisfaction of somebody who had used the day properly.

The guided visit had shown me things I would never have found alone. Going back on my own had given me something different. I still did not understand Fes completely, and I certainly had not “conquered” its medina, but I no longer needed somebody walking in front of me to feel that I belonged there.

That was enough.

Leaving Fes

The following morning, 30 December, there was little time left. My train to Rabat departed at 10:35, so after breakfast I packed and walked to Fes railway station.

By then the route through the modern city already felt considerably less foreign than it had two days earlier.

Moroccan railways were another part of the trip about which I had arrived with few expectations. The station in Fes was clean and organised, access to the platforms was controlled and my train arrived as expected. It was almost completely full, but comfortable.

Fes railway station — my train to Rabat waiting at the platform, carrying me from one version of Morocco toward another.
Fes railway station — my train to Rabat waiting at the platform, carrying me from one version of Morocco toward another.

Arabic and French signage occasionally required slightly more concentration from somebody who spoke neither language properly, but there were not so many departures that getting hopelessly lost seemed likely. Staff were helpful when necessary, and the entire system worked with considerably less drama than I had anticipated.

For roughly three hours I watched Morocco pass outside the window.

After Fes, I thought I had begun to understand the country a little better: old medinas, persistent guides, intense markets, remarkable hospitality, powerful smells and luxury hotels existing only a few kilometres from urban worlds that sometimes seemed centuries older.

I was heading to Rabat.

It would turn out to be a very different Morocco.