Fez el-Bali, the old medina at the heart of our Highlights of Morocco trip, is one of the largest car-free urban spaces in the world — and it was never built with a grid. It grew organically over more than a thousand years, which means asking "how do I get to the tanneries" gets you a shrug and a smile more often than useful directions.
Navigate by landmark, not by map
Phone GPS struggles inside the medina's covered sections, and street names are inconsistent even where they exist. The locals' method works better: navigate by fixed landmarks — a particular gate, a well-known fountain, the smell of the tanneries before you see them — rather than trying to follow a route on a screen.
The tanneries, without the hard sell
Chouara Tannery is the medina's most photographed stop, viewed from surrounding leather shop terraces. It's also a well-worn tourist funnel, and the mint sprig offered "to mask the smell" often comes with pressure to buy. Our guides know terraces with genuinely free access — part of why we build a guided walk into the itinerary rather than sending travelers in alone on day one.
Get lost in the medina on purpose at least once. Every wrong turn leads to a different century.
Beyond the tourist route
Once you've done the guided walk, the medina rewards a second, unplanned visit — the Nejjarine Museum's carved cedar courtyard, the quiet Andalusian quarter across the river, and bakeries that still fire bread in communal wood ovens for neighbourhood families, exactly as they have for centuries.