This is your destination guide for Morocco.
This is your destination guide for Chefchaouen & the Rif
📍 Part of MoroccoA blue mountain town two hours from Europe, with waterfalls and a national park behind it.
The reality: Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 as a fortress against the Portuguese, then filled with Muslims and Jews expelled from Spain — which is why the medina looks more Andalusian than Moroccan, all tiled roofs and small squares rather than tall blank walls. It was closed to outsiders for most of its history and only opened up under the Spanish protectorate in 1920. The blue came later. Whether it started with the Jewish community in the 1930s, with keeping mosquitoes off, or with keeping walls cool, nobody can prove — and it's now repainted every spring because people come to see it.
That's the honest frame: this is a town of about 45,000 people that has become a photograph. It's still a good place to be. Ten minutes above the medina the tour groups stop, the alleys go back to being where people live, and the Rif mountains start — walnut and oak, springs, and the Talassemtane national park with fir forest at 1,600 m.
The other half of the trip is the road to it. Tetouan's UNESCO medina, an hour away, is the least visited great medina in Morocco. Tangier, two hours north, is a port city with a view of Spain and a literary hangover it's finally shaken off. Together they make three or four days that feel nothing like the imperial cities.
Small, steep and washed in about six different blues — and it empties completely after five.
The medina is maybe a kilometre across, and you'll have its shape by lunchtime. Plaza Uta el-Hammam is the centre — cafés under a red-earth kasbah built in the 1470s, with a small garden, a prison you can walk into, and a tower worth the climb for a view over the tiled roofs.
The Grande Mosquée beside it has an octagonal minaret, unusual in Morocco and a nod to the Andalusian builders.
The blue gets deeper the higher you go: the alleys around Rue Bin Souaki and the steps below Bab Onsar are where the paint is thickest.
Two places do the light properly. Ras el-Maa, at the top of the medina, is the spring that comes out of the hillside and runs through an open washing area where women still bring laundry, with café terraces built out over the water.
The Spanish Mosque — a 1920s ruin on the hill opposite, roofless and empty — is a 30-minute climb for the whole blue town below at sunset, which is why there will be forty other people up there. Go at seven in the morning instead, and it's yours.
One under-visited medina, one port city, and a Mediterranean shoreline that barely registers abroad.
Tetouan, an hour north, has a UNESCO-listed medina almost nobody visits — whitewashed, Andalusian, built by refugees from Granada and still full of working craft souks, with a Spanish-built ensanche of Art Deco frontages outside the walls.
It was the capital of the Spanish protectorate, which is why the street signs, the pastries and the pronunciation are all a little Iberian. Half a day, and you'll have the place largely to yourself.
Tangier, two hours north, spent decades as an international zone with a reputation, and has spent the last decade rebuilding its seafront instead. The kasbah at the top of the medina, the American Legation museum in a donated eighteenth-century house, and Café Hafa on the cliff — open since 1921, mint tea on stepped terraces looking at Spain — are the three that hold up.
East of Tetouan, Oued Laou and Bou Ahmed are strung along a Mediterranean coast road with empty beaches and almost no foreign tourism at all.
A gorge with a natural stone arch in it, a national park nobody has heard of, and a peak above the town.
Mountain food — goat cheese, bean soup and bread — with a Spanish accent on the coast.
The Rif makes jben, a fresh white goat cheese, and around Chefchaouen it turns up grilled, in salads and on bread at the Akchour shacks.
Bissara — split fava beans blended with olive oil and cumin, eaten with a lot of bread — is the breakfast, sold from doorways for a few dirhams in the cold months.
Beyond that it's tagines with local olives and mountain herbs, kefta grilled on the square, and goat rather than lamb. In Tetouan and Tangier the food turns Spanish and turns to fish: grilled sardines, fried calamari, pescado frito by any other name.
Tea is mint with a lot of sugar. Chefchaouen is a conservative small town — alcohol is not sold in the medina, and only a couple of hotels outside it serve any; Tangier and Tetouan have licensed restaurants.
And the plainly stated bit: the Rif is Morocco's cannabis-growing region, most of the crop is processed into hashish, and it's illegal to buy or carry. You will be offered it in the medina. A short no ends it.
April to June is the best of it: 20–27°C, the Rif green, and the rivers still running well for Akchour.
September and October are the other window — warm and dry, with the almond and olive harvests.
July and August are hot but not brutal at 600 m, and are the busiest weeks of the year: Moroccan families holiday here, prices rise and the medina is full.
November to March is genuinely wet — this is one of the rainiest corners of Morocco. Guesthouses are cold, some walking routes turn to mud, and snow on the surrounding peaks isn't unusual in January. Bring a coat, and it's the cheapest, emptiest time to have the blue alleys to yourself.
There is no railway in the Rif. The connections are CTM and Supratours coaches, comfortable and worth booking a day ahead in summer: Tetouan 1 hour, Tangier 2, Fes about 4, Casablanca 6.
Shared grands taxis — old Mercedes that leave when six passengers are in them — run the same routes faster and cheaper, and you can pay for the empty seats if you're in a hurry.
Coming from Europe, the ferry from Tarifa to Tangier Ville takes an hour; Algeciras to Tangier Med is about ninety minutes.
Inside Chefchaouen, everything is walking, and most of it uphill — the medina is stepped and closed to cars. If you drive, park in the lots below Bab Ain or by Plaza Mohammed V and walk in; your guesthouse will meet you if the bags are heavy. A hire car is genuinely useful for the coast road east of Tetouan and the Akchour trailhead, and unnecessary otherwise — a return taxi to Akchour is around 200–300 dh.
Compare rental cars →Small guesthouses in the blue, or a hotel where a car can reach you.
Inside the medina — twenty-room dars and guesthouses with tiled courtyards and roof terraces. Steps, no vehicle access, and the best of the early-morning light.
Around Plaza Uta el-Hammam — convenient and central, and noisier than you'd expect from a town this size; the cafés run late in summer.
Below Bab Ain / the new town — parking, more space, five minutes' walk up to the blue. The practical choice with luggage or children.
Above the medina, towards Ras el-Maa — quieter, steeper, and the terraces look down over the whole town.
Tetouan or Tangier — a night at each end of the trip, if you're arriving by ferry or flying out of Tangier.
Chefchaouen is one of the cheapest places in Morocco to sleep and eat, and August is the exception — Moroccan holiday demand pushes guesthouse rates up by half for a few weeks. Outside that, a good room here costs less than a hostel bed in Marrakech.
Prices in 2026 dirhams (≈ 10.8 to €1). Cash town — there are ATMs on Avenue Hassan II and around Plaza Mohammed V, but most guesthouses, taxis and small restaurants in the medina don't take cards.
Go if you want a small blue mountain town, a gorge walk behind it, and two under-visited cities on the road in. Skip if you're expecting to be the only one there, or you were counting on a train.
Found this useful? Share it.
Still planning?
We don’t stop at “here’s the country.” Real places to stay, what to do, apps that matter, even how to find someone to travel with — plus guides for whatever vibe you’re after, from beach days to wine country to slow weekends. All up top. Spin for somewhere new when you’re done with this one.
