Chefchaouen
Blue Painted Hill Medina In The Rif, Founded 1471 As A Fortress Against Portuguese Expansion; Not UNESCO Inscribed, And Its Draw Is The Painted Lanes Rather Than Any Single Monument · Chefchaouen, Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima
Chefchaouen is a small hill town in the Rif mountains where walls, steps, doorframes and often the paving itself are washed in blue, and that is honestly the whole attraction: there is no great monument here, only a couple of square kilometres of painted lanes climbing between two limestone peaks. It was founded in 1471 as a fortress against Portuguese expansion, took in Muslim and Jewish families driven out of Spain, and kept a Spanish accent in its speech, its food and its tiled roofs that no other Moroccan medina has. Why the blue exists is a real question with no settled answer: Jewish refugees in the 1930s, keeping mosquitoes off, keeping the walls cool, and simply because visitors now expect it are all offered, and two neighbours will tell you different things. People come to walk, to photograph, to eat goat cheese on a square under the kasbah, and to hike to waterfalls in the mountains above. The honest caveat: it is small, it is heavily photographed, and it is a genuine two to four hours by road from anywhere you are likely to have slept the night before.
Blue-washed medina on the slopes below the Rif peaks of Jebel el-Kelaa and Jebel Meggou, centred on Plaza Uta el-Hammam, Chefchaouen, Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima, Morocco
The medina is a living town: the lanes are open at all hours and free, and the only ticketed thing in it is the kasbah on Plaza Uta el-Hammam, which generally opens through the morning and afternoon with a long midday break and closes one day a week - confirm locally, and expect shorter hours in Ramadan and around Friday midday prayer. There is no railway to Chefchaouen. CTM and Supratours coaches run from Tangier, Tetouan, Fes and Casablanca and should be booked a day or two ahead in summer; shared grand taxis from Tetouan leave when full and are the quickest link. Guided hikes into Talassemtane and the Akchour trailhead transfers are arranged the day before, not on the morning.