Fes was founded in 789 and has kept its street plan, its colleges and its trades ever since. This route follows the city chronologically: Idrisid and Marinid Fes el-Bali, then the palace city of 1276, then the quarters where exiles settled.
Marinid sultan Abu Said Uthman II built this residential college between 1323 and 1325, beside the spice merchants' souk that gave it its name. Zellige, carved cedar and Kufic stucco ring a small marble courtyard. Open 09:00–18:00.
Fatima al-Fihri founded this mosque and teaching centre in 859, making it the oldest continuously operating degree-granting institution on earth. Non-Muslims see the courtyard and its forest of columns through fourteen open doorways.
The shrine of the man who refounded Fes in 809. His tomb was rediscovered intact in 1437 and the sanctuary rebuilt under Moulay Ismail in 1717. Wooden bars across the lanes still mark the horm, the old asylum boundary.
Roofless 14th-century royal tombs on the Kolla hillside, stripped of their marble facing centuries ago. From the platform the whole plan of Fes el-Bali reads clearly: Qarawiyyin bank on the right, Andalusian bank across the river.
Sultan Moulay Hassan I began this Hispano-Moorish summer palace in the 1890s; it opened as a museum of Fassi arts in 1915. Collections cover cobalt-blue Fes ceramics, Marinid coins, astrolabes and woodwork salvaged from Qarawiyyin.
Seven brass doors framed in zellige and carved cedar front the Dar el-Makhzen, the palace begun in 1276 when the Marinids founded Fes el-Jdid as their fortified administrative city. The doors were hammered by Fassi craftsmen in the 1960s.
Saadian sultan Ahmed al-Mansour raised this bastion in 1582, after the Battle of the Three Kings, to hold the rebellious medina under cannon fire. Since 1963 it has housed the national arms museum, with some 5,000 weapons.
Royal gardens laid out in the 18th century under Sultan Moulay Abdallah and watered from the Oued Fes by a waterwheel. Closed for years, they were restored and reopened in 2011 with the noria, bamboo alleys and lake intact.
Built in the 17th century by a merchant family in the Mellah, the walled Jewish quarter created in 1438. Restored in 1999 with UNESCO backing, it keeps its wooden ark, raised tebah and a mikveh reached by stairs below the floor.
An 18th-century caravanserai where traders stabled mules on the ground floor and slept in the galleries above. Restored and opened in 1998, it displays Berber doors, cedar chests and minbar fragments over three floors. Entry 30 MAD.
Founded in 1271 by Marinid sultan Abu Yusuf Yaqub in a converted house, this is the oldest surviving medersa in Morocco. It opens onto the coppersmiths' square, where cauldrons have been beaten by hand on the same spot since the 14th century.
The east bank was settled in 818 by families expelled from Córdoba, facing the bank of Kairouan exiles across the river. Maryam al-Fihri founded the mosque in 859; its monumental north gate and carved cedar porch date from 1209.