Fez: walking the world's largest car-free medina

Fez, in northern Morocco, was founded in the late eighth century, and its old city, Fes el-Bali, has been on UNESCO's World Heritage List since 1981. It is often described as one of the largest and oldest car-free urban zones anywhere. That means you will do the city on foot, or behind a donkey, and you will get lost. Getting lost is part of the plan.

The old city is organised by craft. In the Chouara tannery quarter, leather is processed in stone vats in a method often described as dating to the eleventh or twelfth century; the exact age varies by source. The Bou Inania madrasa, a fourteenth-century Marinid building, rewards a slow look at its carved cedar and plasterwork. Elsewhere you will find brass workers, potters, weavers and carpenters in working lanes.

At the centre of the story is al-Qarawiyyin, a mosque and learning centre whose buildings were completed in 859. Guinness World Records recognises it as the oldest degree-granting university in the world, though historians dispute the claim and some give the title to Bologna. Our Heritage page looks more closely at that history.

Practicalities: hire a licensed guide for the first day, agree a price in advance, and use the quieter morning hours for the tanneries and the lanes. Tanning is hard, smelly and sometimes hazardous work, so treat the viewing terraces as workplaces, not a stage. Fès–Saïs airport is about 15 kilometres south of the old city.

A note on entry: most sources say Indian passport holders need a visa for Morocco, usually obtained as an e-visa, but guides conflict. Check the official Moroccan foreign ministry or consulate before you book.