Panorámica de Chefchaouen, la ciudad azul de las montañas del Rif

Destination

Chefchaouen, the blue city of the Rif

A blue-washed medina in the Rif mountains, and the one place on the route that asks nothing of you but a walk.

Routes

Itineraries that pass through Chefchaouen

2 routes go through here.

Torre Hassan y su explanada de columnas en Rabat

10 days

10 Day Morocco Itinerary

Ten days is the point where Morocco stops being a highlights reel — the blue city and the Atlantic fit in without anything else being cut short.

from $1,405 /person

See the route

Panorámica del ksar de Ait Ben Haddou rodeado de palmeral

12 days

12 Day Morocco Itinerary

Twelve days is the full country at a human pace: every imperial city, the blue north, the Sahara and the Atlantic, with guided days rather than drive-by stops.

from $1,760 /person

See the route

Visiting with Sahara Viajes

Chefchaouen sits at 600 metres in the Rif, and the blue is repainted by hand every year, which is why it looks the way it does in photographs taken decades apart. Why blue is disputed — the usual answers are the Jewish community that settled here in the 1930s, mosquitoes, or simply that it keeps the walls cool. Ask three people and you will get three answers, all delivered with total confidence.

There is no monument to queue for. The medina is small enough to cross in half an hour, the Spanish mosque on the hill above town is a forty-minute walk for the view back down, and the rest of it is sitting in the Plaza Uta el-Hammam with a mint tea watching cats.

It only fits on the longer routes — 10 days and up — because it is genuinely far north, and squeezing it into a week means driving days nobody enjoys.