The 10 Best Travel Experiences in Morocco

Every wall, staircase and doorway in this Rif Mountains town is washed in shades of blue, a tradition with disputed origins that's turned the entire medina into one continuous wash of colour.

Cats doze in doorways and potted plants spill over blue-painted steps, with barely a corner that doesn't reward a second look.

Founded as a 15th-century fortress town, its alleys were never built for cars.

A sea of orange dunes rising up to 150 metres at the edge of the Sahara, the most accessible major dune field in Morocco and the base for camel treks and overnight desert camps.

The dunes shift constantly with the wind, and sunrise and sunset turn the sand from deep gold to burnt red.

Nights in a Berber camp under an unpolluted sky are as much the draw as the dunes themselves.

Marrakech's main square transforms completely between day and night: by afternoon it's snake charmers, henna artists and orange juice stalls, and by dusk it becomes one of the world's great open-air food markets, dozens of numbered stalls filling the square with smoke, spice and the calls of vendors.

UNESCO declared it a Masterpiece of Oral Heritage.

Morocco's most visited city layers a maze-like medina of souks, riads and palaces against the backdrop of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains.

Beyond Djemaa el-Fna's nightly spectacle, the city holds the tiled Bahia Palace, the cactus-filled Majorelle Garden, and endless alleys of dyers, leatherworkers and spice sellers.

Getting deliberately lost in the medina, then finding a rooftop café to reorient, is as much the experience as any single sight.

A switchback road climbs through this dramatic red-rock gorge in the High Atlas foothills, past strange wind-eroded rock formations locals call the Monkey Fingers.

Kasbahs and Berber villages built from the same red earth blend almost seamlessly into the canyon walls around them.

The valley floor, planted with almond and fig trees, adds a green ribbon through the otherwise stark rust-coloured landscape.

This fortified clay ksar of tightly clustered earthen buildings has stood on a Saharan trade route for centuries and become one of cinema's favorite backdrops, doubling for ancient settings in Gladiator, Game of Thrones and Lawrence of Arabia.

A handful of families still live within its walls.

Climbing to the top for views over the Ounila Valley shows off both the settlement's defensive logic and its striking desert-earth architecture.

The old walled medina of Fes is the world's largest car-free urban area, a dense 9th-century labyrinth of over 9,000 narrow lanes where mules still haul goods past tanneries, madrasas and workshops largely unchanged for centuries.

The Chouara Tannery's terraced dye pits are the best-known sight, but the real experience is the medina itself — genuinely functioning, with artisans working leather, brass and textiles the same way for generations.

Morocco's tallest waterfall drops around 110 meters in a series of cascades through red sandstone cliffs, with wild Barbary macaque monkeys often seen in the olive groves along the approach trail.

Paths wind down to the pool at the base, where small boats ferry visitors close enough to feel the spray, and mule owners offer rides back up for those who'd rather skip the climb.

A fortified Atlantic port town with whitewashed, blue-shuttered buildings and windswept ramparts, Essaouira trades the desert heat of Marrakech for sea breeze, fresh seafood grilled dockside, and some of Morocco's best windsurfing and kitesurfing conditions.

Its 18th-century medina, also UNESCO-listed, is smaller and calmer than Fes or Marrakech, with a strong arts and music scene reflected in its galleries and the annual Gnaoua music festival.

The best-preserved Roman ruins in Morocco sit in open farmland near Meknes, their mosaic floors — remarkably intact after nearly 2,000 years — depicting mythological scenes across the remains of villas, a basilica and a triumphal arch.

Storks nest on top of the surviving columns, and the fertile plain surrounding the site explains why Rome valued this outpost enough to build so substantially here.