Around Fez
Fez beyond Chefchaouen
The Chefchaouen day takes a full day on its own. Here's how it sits alongside the rest of a Fez trip, and what to do with the days either side of it.
See Chefchaouen tickets on GetYourGuide ↗Fitting it into a trip
| When | Why it works | |
|---|---|---|
| This tour | Full day, ~08:00–19:30 | One long day; give it its own slot rather than stacking it |
| Fez medina | Half to full day, any day | The world's largest car-free urban area — easily its own day |
| Volubilis & Meknes | Full day | Roman ruins and an imperial city, opposite direction from Chefchaouen |
| The Middle Atlas | Full or half day | Cedar forests and mountain towns south of Fez, a different landscape again |
Give Chefchaouen its own day
At roughly twelve hours door to door, the Chefchaouen trip is a genuine full day rather than something to combine with anything else on the same date. The sensible way to build a Fez itinerary around it is to treat it as one full slot, ideally with a lighter day either side, since an early pickup and a late return leave limited appetite for much beyond dinner nearby that evening.
Fez's own medina deserves its own day
Fez el-Bali, the old walled medina, is widely described as the largest car-free urban area in the world, with thousands of narrow lanes, historic madrasas, tanneries and souks that easily fill a full day on their own. Pairing it with Chefchaouen on the same date isn't realistic — the two are better treated as separate full days than combined into one exhausting one.
Volubilis and Meknes, in the other direction
A day trip to the Roman ruins at Volubilis and the imperial city of Meknes runs roughly west and south of Fez rather than north into the Rif, making it a genuinely different day of Moroccan history rather than a variation on the mountain drive to Chefchaouen. Travellers with several days in Fez often treat the two as complementary full-day trips in opposite directions.
The Middle Atlas, for a different mountain day
South of Fez, the Middle Atlas offers cedar forests, Barbary macaques and mountain towns like Ifrane and Azrou — a cooler, greener contrast to both the city and to the Rif's own mountain landscape around Chefchaouen. It's a reasonable alternative or addition for travellers who want more than one mountain day without repeating the same drive.
Spacing the long days out
If Chefchaouen is one of several full-day excursions on a Fez itinerary, spacing them rather than stacking them back to back makes for a noticeably better trip — each of these trips starts early and runs long in its own way. A genuinely easy day in the city between two long ones, with no fixed pickup time at all, is worth building in deliberately.
Arriving or leaving via Tangier instead
Travellers building an open-jaw itinerary — arriving in Fez and leaving via Tangier, or the reverse — sometimes route through Chefchaouen as a stop along the way rather than a round-trip day from either city. It's a reasonable way to avoid backtracking the same road twice, though it needs its own transport arrangements rather than this shared day-trip listing, which returns to Fez by design.