Tetouan & Northern Morocco Travel Guide

Tetouan Morocco has the most intact Andalusian medina in Morocco. The city’s character was shaped by the waves of Muslims and Jews expelled from Spain after 1492 — they brought with them the crafts, the architecture, the music, and the food of Al-Andalus, and Tetouan preserved it more completely than anywhere else in the country. Walking the medina lanes in Tetouan is as close as Morocco gets to the whitewashed Moorish towns of southern Spain, but without the reconstruction.

The Place Hassan II — the Royal Palace square — is the formal heart of the city. The palace facade, the fountain, and the Spanish colonial buildings around the square make it one of the most photogenic public spaces in northern Morocco. The medina extends north and west from the square through a warren of lanes that are narrower and quieter than Marrakech’s souks, and far less aggressively commercial.

The artisan quarter around the tanneries is where Tetouan’s craft tradition is most visible. Leather goods, woodworking, and pottery all have workshops in the medina. The quality is high and the prices reflect actual production costs rather than tourist markup. The Ethnographic Museum inside the old kasbah gives context to what you see on the streets — traditional costumes, musical instruments, and household objects from the Andalusian period through the 20th century.

The Spanish colonial new town — built during the protectorate period (1912 to 1956) — is worth 30 minutes on foot for the architecture alone. The buildings around Place Moulay el Mehdi are in better condition than most equivalent colonial architecture in Morocco and give the city its distinctive dual character: Andalusian medina on one side, Spanish plaza on the other.

Tangier sits at the northwestern tip of Africa, 14 km from Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar. It has been an international zone, a smugglers’ port, a literary outpost, and a transit city in the same century — sometimes all at once. The city that inspired Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, and the Beat Generation writers who came here in the 1950s has been substantially rebuilt since, but the kasbah and the old medina still carry the character that made it famous.

The main things to do in Tangier are concentrated in a walkable area. The Kasbah at the top of the medina contains Dar el-Makhzen — the former sultan’s palace, now a museum of Moroccan arts and crafts with one of the best collections of ceramics, woodwork, and metalwork in the north. The Grand Socco (Place du 9 Avril 1947) is the main square connecting the medina to the new city — market sellers, calèches, and the constant movement of a city that connects two continents. The Tangier American Legation museum in the medina is the only US National Historic Landmark outside the United States and has a compelling collection on Tangier’s international history.

Cap Spartel — the northwestern tip of Africa — is 14 km west of Tangier by road. The lighthouse at the cape marks the point where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean. The Hercules Caves below the cape are carved into the clifftop limestone, with a sea-facing opening in the shape of the African continent viewed from the ocean. Both are worth the 20-minute drive from the city centre.

Tangier is also the northern terminus of the Al Boraq high-speed train — Morocco’s first TGV — which connects to Casablanca in 2 hours 10 minutes via Rabat and Kenitra. It is the most practical entry point for a northern Morocco circuit that continues south by road through Tetouan, Chefchaouen, and Fes.

Chefchaouen is the most visually distinctive city in Morocco. The medina is painted blue and white throughout — buildings, steps, pots, doors — and sits in a valley in the Rif Mountains at around 600 metres altitude. The town was founded in 1471 as a fortress against Portuguese coastal raids and has been continuously inhabited since. Its current character — artisan workshops, textile markets, mountain streams running through the lower medina — reflects a town that still functions as a genuine community rather than a tourist set.

The best light in Chefchaouen is before 9am when the alleyways are empty and the shadows are sharp on the blue walls. The Spanish mosque on the hill above the town gives a panoramic view over the entire medina and the Rif foothills — about 20 minutes on foot from Place Uta el-Hammam, the main square. The square itself has the best cafes in the city for breakfast and the most consistent people-watching of any public space in northern Morocco.

The medina is small enough to walk completely in a couple of hours but atmospheric enough to fill two evenings. The textile souk along Rue Targui sells handwoven wool blankets, djellabas, and scarves at prices that reflect genuine production rather than tourist markup. The tanneries on the eastern edge of the medina are smaller than those in Fes but less visited and easier to see properly.