10-day imperial cities tour from Casablanca

The drive from Casablanca to Rabat takes about an hour, and the morning goes to Morocco's political capital: the Kasbah of the Udayas above the river mouth, the unfinished Hassan Tower, and the Mausoleum of Mohammed V beside it. After lunch, the route turns north into the Rif Mountains toward Chefchaouen, roughly four hours through pine forest and small farming towns. This is really where the Morocco northern cities itinerary begins in earnest, since the landscape and the pace both shift once you're past Rabat. Overnight in Chefchaouen.

Chefchaouen was founded in 1471, and the blue paint on the buildings is a newer habit. One story traces it to Jewish refugees who settled here in the 1930s and associated the color with the sky and with faith, though nobody agrees on exactly when the tradition started. The morning is free to wander the medina at your own pace, up toward the Spanish Mosque on the hill for a view over the rooftops, or out to the Akchour waterfalls if there's time for a short hike. After lunch, the drive to Tangier runs through Tetouan and along the coast, arriving with enough daylight left for a walk through the Kasbah and a look at the old American Legation building, a 19th-century diplomatic property gifted by the Sultan and now a small museum. Overnight in Tangier.

This is mostly a travel day, but Tangier deserves a slow start before the drive. The Cape Spartel lighthouse marks the point where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, and the nearby Caves of Hercules have an opening cut into the rock that's often described as shaped like a map of Africa. By late morning, the road turns south toward Meknes, roughly four and a half hours with a stop or two along the way. Meknes became Morocco's imperial capital under Sultan Moulay Ismail in the late 1600s, and tomorrow is spent there and at the Roman ruins nearby. Overnight in Meknes.

Volubilis sits about half an hour outside Meknes, a Roman city that was gradually abandoned by around the 11th century after well over a thousand years of habitation. Large sections of mosaic floor are still in place under open sky, along with the Triumphal Arch and the columns of the old basilica. Back in Meknes, the afternoon covers Bab Mansour, the city's grand gate finished in 1732, and the Heri es-Souani granaries, built under Moulay Ismail to store enough grain to last for years. From there it's about an hour to Fes, where the next two nights are spent.

Fes gets a full day because it needs one. The University of Al Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, is recognized by UNESCO and Guinness World Records as the oldest continuously operating educational institution in the world, and its historic library reopened to the public in 2016 after a long restoration. The Chouara Tannery is best seen from one of the leather shop terraces above it, where the dye pits sit in rows like a giant paint palette. Fes el Bali, the old medina, has an estimated 9,000 narrow streets and no cars, so donkeys and handcarts still do the heavy lifting. This is where the historic cities exploration side of the trip is at its most concentrated, and it's worth getting a little lost in before dinner. This also wraps up the Casablanca to Fes and Chefchaouen tour portion of the route. From here, the trip turns toward the desert.

The drive from Fes to Merzouga takes most of the day, but it's a good one to be in the car for. Ifrane looks more like an Alpine village than anywhere else in Morocco, with steep roofs built for snow that barely make sense until you remember the town sits at over 1,600 meters. Just past it, the Cedar Forest around Azrou is home to wild Barbary macaques that wander right up to the road looking for food. The route continues down through Midelt and the Ziz Valley, where palm groves trace the river in a long green line against dry, bare hills, before reaching the dunes of Erg Chebbi in time to watch the color change at sunset. The evening is a camel trek out to a desert camp, dinner, and music around the fire under a sky with a lot more stars than most people are used to seeing.

Sunrise over Erg Chebbi is worth the early start. Camel treks usually head back to camp while the light is still soft and orange, before breakfast and a shower back at the riad in Merzouga. From there, the drive heads toward Tinghir and the Todra Gorges, where the canyon narrows to about ten meters across in places with rock walls rising more than 150 meters straight up. It's a popular spot for rock climbers, and it's easy to see why once you're standing at the bottom looking up. The road continues through the Dades Valley, sometimes called the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs, past a set of eroded rock formations locals call the monkey fingers, before reaching Ouarzazate for the night.

Ait Ben Haddou is a fortified village of packed red earth that's been used as a filming location so often it's easier to list the productions that skipped it than the ones that used it. Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, and parts of Game of Thrones were all shot here at different points. Only a handful of families still live inside the old walls today, and the site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. After a couple of hours there, the road climbs into the High Atlas and over the Tizi n'Tichka pass, the highest paved mountain pass in Morocco at just over 2,260 meters, before dropping down into Marrakech by late afternoon.

The last morning is spent in the Marrakech medina: the Bahia Palace, built for a 19th-century grand vizier and full of carved cedar ceilings and painted stucco, the Saadian Tombs, sealed off and forgotten for more than two centuries until they were rediscovered in 1917, and the Koutoubia Mosque, whose minaret is often linked architecturally to the Giralda in Seville. The Majorelle Garden, planted by the French painter Jacques Majorelle in the 1920s and later restored by Yves Saint Laurent, is worth an hour if time allows before lunch. From here, travelers flying home can be transferred straight to Marrakech airport, and those with an extra day can continue to the coast at Essaouira, about two and a half hours away, for fishing boats, sea air, and one slower final night, a fitting close to a cultural tour of Morocco that started on the Atlantic coast in Casablanca and ends at the foot of the Atlas Mountains.