Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen climbs a slope in the western Rif mountains at about 600 metres, and the walls, stairways, doors and lanes of its old town are washed in every shade of blue against white. The effect has earned it the nickname of the Blue City, or the Blue Pearl. Why the town turned blue is not settled: one explanation says the colour keeps mosquitoes away, another that it stands for the sky and heaven, and some residents say painting it blue was required in the 1970s to draw visitors. Above the houses rise the peaks of Kaʻala mountain, and a common reading of the town's name, from Arabic and Berber, is "look at the horns", a reference to the two summits above it.

The town began in 1471 as a small fortress founded by Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami to hold the region against Portuguese raids on northern Morocco. Over the following century and a half it filled with refugees from al-Andalus, Muslims, Moriscos and Sephardic Jews, who built their quarters on the mountainside in a style close to that of Granada, with arched brick passages, courtyard houses planted with orange and lemon trees, and a network of water channels. Jews once made up about a third of the population, and their cemetery and the remains of the mellah survive. In the 20th century the town was occupied by Spain in 1920, belonged to Abd el-Krim's Republic of the Rif between 1924 and 1926, and returned to Morocco with independence in 1956.

The heart of the medina is Uta Hammam Square, laid out probably in the 16th century and framed by the Great Mosque and the Kasbah, the original citadel. Its rammed-earth walls are reinforced by ten towers, plus a taller stone tower that recalls the tower-residences of Nasrid Granada, and its garden courtyard now holds a small museum. Just outside the old walls the spring of Ras al-Ma, the town's historic water source, runs past an old mill, while a mosque built by the Spanish in the 1920s on a hill to the east gives a view over the whole blue town. Many families here still keep up the tradition of Andalusi music.

Getting there

Chefchaouen sits in the Rif between Tétouan and Ouazzane, and the medina is in the centre of the town. The nearest airport is Tétouan's Sania Ramel Airport (TTU), about 47 km in a straight line; the road between the two towns winds through the mountains.