The Craft Road
9-Day Morocco Crafts Tour: Fes to Marrakech
Nine days from Fes to Marrakech, following the things people still make by hand
- 9 days · 8 nights
- Fes → Marrakech
- About 26 hours over 9 days. driving
Almost every workshop on this route is somewhere I already drive past. This trip just stops at them. It runs the length of the country from Fes to Marrakech, and the thread holding it together is craft: what's made, where, and why it's made there and not somewhere else. Clay that only comes out that green in one oasis. Carpets whose patterns tell you which valley the weaver is from. Fossils cut out of a seabed that's now a desert. You'll meet people working, not performing, and you'll come home with things that mean something. I'll also tell you plainly which of two doors is the workshop and which is the shop.
Why I run it this wayI take you to workshops, not to showrooms that pay for the introduction. If you buy something, you buy it from the person who made it, at the price they set.
The things worth stopping for
- Tanneries, brass and zellige in Fes, watched from the workshop floor
- Damascene metalwork in Meknes
- Fossil marble cut and polished at Erfoud
- The green glaze of Tamegroute, which is made nowhere else
- Ouzguita carpets on the loom at Taznakht
Where this trip takes you
Straight lines between stops, not the exact roads — the driving is the winding version of this.
How the trip goes
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Day 1: Fes: fire, skin and metal
Driving: NoneThe tanneries first, from a terrace above the pits, then the brass souk where you hear the workshops before you see them. The afternoon in the potters' quarter at Ain Nokbi, where the clay is thrown, fired and cut into mosaic.
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Day 2: Fes: thread and tile
Driving: NoneWeavers at their looms, then the zellige cutters — the tile mosaic that covers half the country, chipped to shape by hand, one piece at a time. Al-Attarine in the afternoon to see what all of it looks like at its absolute peak.
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Day 3: Meknes, then south
Driving: About 4 hoursDamascene work in Meknes: silver inlaid into blackened steel, a technique that came the long way round from Damascus. Then south out of the imperial cities and into the Middle Atlas, sleeping at Midelt.
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Day 4: Carpets, then the Ziz
Driving: About 4 hoursA morning with the weavers at Midelt, where the carpets are heavier and darker than anything from the south. Then down the Ziz gorges — the palm valley that runs all the way to the desert — to Erfoud and the workshops cutting fossil marble.
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Day 5: Rissani, and the dunes
Driving: About 2 hoursRissani market, which is where the caravans used to end: dates, iron, livestock and everything else, and none of it arranged for visitors. Then out to Erg Chebbi for the night under the dunes.
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Day 6: West along the Draa to Tamegroute
Driving: About 6 hoursA long, good drive west with the desert on one side. We finish at Tamegroute, where the pottery comes out of the kiln that particular green and where the library still holds manuscripts written on gazelle skin.
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Day 7: Up the valley to Taznakht
Driving: About 4 hoursBack up the Draa through Zagora and Agdz, then west to Taznakht — carpet country, where the Ouzguita weave patterns you can read like a signature.
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Day 8: Ait Ben Haddou, and over the pass
Driving: About 5 hoursEast to Ait Ben Haddou for the afternoon light on the earth walls, then the Tizi n'Tichka into Marrakech.
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Day 9: The Marrakech souks
Driving: NoneThe last day in the souks with someone who knows which door leads to a workshop. Dyers, leather, lantern-makers, and the bit of the medina where things are still made rather than just sold.
I'll email you this itinerary — every day, what's included, what it costs — so you can think it over and share it.
One email with the itinerary. No account, and I don't pass your address to anyone — see the privacy policy.
What's included
Included
- Private air-conditioned van with me driving
- 8 nights accommodation including 1 in a desert camp
- Breakfast each morning, dinner at the camp
- Workshop visits arranged in advance
- Fuel, tolls and parking
- Fes pickup, Marrakech drop-off
Not included
- Flights and visas
- Travel insurance
- Lunches and dinners unless listed
- Entrance fees to monuments and museums
- Local guides inside the medinas
- Tips
Read more about where you'll be
A closer look
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Every route bends: more time somewhere, a different start, a night added. Send your dates and I'll plan it around you.