Morocco is three hours from Europe and about as different from it as three hours can get. Ten days is enough for the classic loop — imperial city, mountains, desert, coast — provided you accept that two of those days are spent driving.
The route below runs anticlockwise from Marrakesh, which is the cheapest airport to reach and the best place to start. Spring and autumn are the seasons; July and August inland exceed 40°C and the desert is genuinely dangerous.
Days 1–3: Marrakesh
Stay in a riad inside the medina, not in Gueliz. The medina before eight in the morning is the reason to be here and you only get it by sleeping in it.
Day one: Jemaa el-Fnaa in the evening, when the food stalls are wheeled in and the square becomes an open-air kitchen. Get properly lost in the souks first.
Day two: Bahia Palace, Ben Youssef Madrasa, the Saadian Tombs, El Badi. Le Jardin Majorelle and the YSL Museum in the afternoon — book ahead.
Day three: a hammam, and a cooking class, both of which are cheap and both of which are among the best things to do in the city.
Days 4–6: over the Atlas to the Sahara
This is a long drive and it is worth it. Hire a car with a driver or join a small-group tour; self-driving is entirely possible and the Tizi n’Tichka pass is a serious mountain road.
Day four: over the Tizi n’Tichka (2,260m) with stops, to Aït Benhaddou — a fortified earthen village that is a UNESCO site and has stood in for half the ancient world on film. Stay in Ouarzazate or at the ksar itself.
Day five: the Dades and Todra gorges, then across to Merzouga at the edge of the Erg Chebbi dunes. Camel out to a desert camp for the night.
The desert night is the point of the whole trip for a lot of people: dunes, a fire, drumming, and a sky with no light pollution anywhere in it.
Day six: dawn on the dunes, then the long drive north to Fes through the Ziz valley and the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas, where there are Barbary macaques.
Days 7–8: Fes
The oldest and least compromised of the imperial cities, and a genuinely different experience from Marrakesh.
Fes el-Bali is the largest car-free urban area in the world — around 9,000 lanes, and you will get lost, and that is correct.
The Chouara tanneries, seen from a leather shop’s terrace. Al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 and arguably the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Bou Inania and Al-Attarine madrasas for the tilework.
Hire a licensed guide for the first half-day here. Fes is the one city where it genuinely helps, and it removes the constant approaches from unofficial ones.
Days 9–10: Essaouira, or Chefchaouen
Two options depending on what you want the trip to end as.
Essaouira, back west via Marrakesh — a windswept Atlantic port with a walled medina, a working fishing harbour, seafood grilled on the quay, and a completely different pace. Six hours from Fes, so this works better as a Marrakesh add-on.
Chefchaouen, north — the blue town in the Rif mountains, four hours from Fes, and the more logical geographic continuation if you are flying out of Tangier or Fes.
Do not attempt both.
What to skip
Casablanca, unless you are flying from it. It is a large modern port city and the Hassan II Mosque, which is genuinely magnificent, is the only reason to stop.
A one-night desert trip. The two-night version from Marrakesh, or the loop above, is the difference between seeing dunes and being in a desert.
Practical
Driving is on the right, roads are good, and the mountain passes are slow. Journey times on a map are optimistic by 30 per cent.
Guides and touts. Unofficial guiding is illegal and persistent, particularly in Fes and Marrakesh. A firm, friendly no repeated three times works. Anyone who tells you the medina is closed today, or that there is a Berber market only on today, is opening a negotiation.
Haggling is expected everywhere except in fixed-price shops. It is a conversation, not a conflict.
Dress modestly outside the beach towns — shoulders and knees covered. This is about respect rather than rules, and it noticeably changes how you are treated.
Ramadan shifts about eleven days earlier each year, and travelling during it is entirely possible and changes the rhythm of the days completely.
Alcohol is available in hotels, licensed restaurants and some supermarkets, and is not sold in the medinas.
If you have more or less time
A week: Marrakesh, the Atlas, and either the desert or the coast. Not both.
Two weeks: add Chefchaouen and Tangier in the north, or the Anti-Atlas and the Draa Valley in the south, which almost nobody visits.
Three days: Marrakesh and the High Atlas. The desert is a ten-hour drive each way and cannot be compressed.
The mistakes
The one-night desert trip, which is fourteen hours of driving for four hours of dunes.
Doing Fes and Marrakesh back to back without a break. Both are intense medinas and the second one lands much better with mountains or coast in between.
Underestimating the driving. Journey times on a map are optimistic by about a third on the mountain roads.