Things to do in Morocco

Marrakech is the most famous city, with its great square of Jemaa el-Fnaa, souks, palaces and gardens at the foot of the Atlas. Fez, the old imperial capital, has a vast medieval medina of madrasas and tanneries, and Casablanca, the largest city, pairs Art Deco boulevards with the monumental Hassan II Mosque above the ocean.

Tangier, at the northern tip, looks across the Strait of Gibraltar from its kasbah, with the blue town of Chefchaouen inland. On the Atlantic, Agadir has a long sandy bay and sunshine for most of the year, near surf villages and argan forests. Between them lie the High Atlas villages, the kasbahs of the Draa Valley and the dunes of Merzouga in the Sahara.

Moroccan cooking is fragrant and generous: tagines, couscous, pastilla, harira soup and mint tea poured from a height. Spring and autumn are the best seasons for most of the country, summer is very hot inland and milder on the coast, and winter brings snow to the mountains and cold nights in the desert.