Fes Day Trips: 6 Offbeat Places to Go

Fes el-Bali earns three or four days on its own, but the city also sits at the hinge of Morocco’s map: an imperial rival and Roman ruins under two hours away, a cedar forest full of wild monkeys about the same distance, and the Sahara’s dunes a genuine two to three day commitment if you are willing to make it. Treat Fes as a base camp, not the whole trip. Two of the six trips below, Chefchaouen and the Sahara, get sold online as single-day excursions from Fes. Neither one honestly is, and this guide says so plainly instead of padding out a rushed itinerary.

Fes as a base: the essentials
Days needed 2 for the closest pair (Meknes/Volubilis, then the Middle Atlas); 5-7 to add Chefchaouen and the Sahara honestly
Best months March-May and September-November, cooler roads and clearer desert nights
Daily cost (day trips) A shared grand taxi plus entry fees runs roughly 150-400 MAD ($16-43); a private guided day tour runs 400-900+ MAD ($43-97+) per person
Watch for Chefchaouen and the Sahara get marketed as one-day round trips from Fes. Both involve 4.5+ hour drives each way; budget the overnight instead

Six offbeat trips from Fes

  1. Moulay Idriss Zerhoun. This hilltop pilgrimage town sits barely 3km, about 10 minutes, from the Volubilis gate, and a rushed group tour will quietly drop it to save half an hour. It was once closed to non-Muslim overnight stays and is now fully open, a living town rather than a ruin, and it is the more interesting half of a Meknes-Volubilis day if you only have time for one detour.
  2. Volubilis. Morocco’s best-preserved Roman site, 70km from Fes and 33km north of Meknes, with mosaics, the Basilica, and the Triumphal Arch still standing. Entry runs 70 MAD, no advance booking, paid at the kiosk on-site; the Archaeological Site of Volubilis has carried UNESCO status since 1997, and it opens 8am-6pm (5pm in winter). Almost nobody visits without pairing it with Meknes, roughly 60km from Fes and reachable by a 45-minute to 1-hour ONCF train for around 18-26 MAD. Book a Meknes and Volubilis day tour to skip the train-then-taxi logistics.
  3. Ifrane and Azrou’s cedar forest. Ifrane sits roughly 1.5-2 hours from Fes by car, nicknamed Little Switzerland for its alpine-chalet architecture and winters that occasionally turn genuinely snowy. Azrou’s cedar forest, a few minutes further on, holds a resident population of Barbary macaques; a sighting is close to guaranteed, not a rare stroke of luck. Book a Middle Atlas day tour if mountain roads and a rental car do not appeal.
  4. Sefrou and Bhalil. Sefrou sits about 30km, 35-40 minutes, from Fes: a walled medina with its own Mellah and a noticeably quieter pace than Fes el-Bali. Its Cherry Festival , three days every June, has carried UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status since 2012. Bhalil, 5km further on, is a village where cave houses cut into the hillside are still lived in, not preserved as a museum piece.
  5. Chefchaouen , done as an overnight. CTM buses run Fes to Chefchaouen roughly every 4 hours, 4 hours 21 minutes to 4 hours 45 minutes each way, tickets running about 110-140 MAD ($11-14); check current times on ctm.ma . Some operators sell a 12-hour round-trip single-day version instead, which means close to 9 hours on a bus for maybe 3 hours in the blue-washed medina. An overnight wins that trade-off every time.
  6. The Sahara at Merzouga. Erg Chebbi’s dunes sit 7-9+ hours from Fes by road, one way, so nobody does this as a genuine day trip no matter what a tour listing implies. Operators sell it as a 2-day/1-night or 3-day/2-night round trip, routing through the Middle Atlas, Ifrane, and the Ziz Valley, with a camel trek into camp for sunset and sunrise over the dunes the next morning. Book a 3-day Sahara tour from Fes .

Do most Fes visitors skip Sefrou and Bhalil?

Yes, and that is the actual selling point. Sefrou draws a fraction of the tour buses that hit Meknes and Volubilis, so its medina and Mellah feel lived-in rather than staged for visitors, and Bhalil’s cave houses rarely make it onto a first-time Fes itinerary at all.

How many days should you set aside for Fes day trips?

Two days covers the closest pair, Meknes/Volubilis and the Middle Atlas, without touching Chefchaouen or the Sahara. Five to seven days lets you add one or both of the overnight trips honestly, rather than compressing a 4.5-hour drive into a single exhausting day.

When to go for these trips

Spring (March-May) and autumn (September-November) suit every trip on this list: Middle Atlas roads stay clear, Volubilis isn’t a furnace, and Sahara nights are cold but manageable. Summer pushes Merzouga’s daytime heat past 45C; winter can dust Ifrane and Azrou with real snow, a genuine possibility above 1,600m. Sefrou’s Cherry Festival runs three days in mid-June most years; confirm the exact 2026 dates on-site before building a trip around it.

Where to stay in Fes between trips

A riad inside Fes el-Bali beats a Ville Nouvelle hotel as a base for this kind of trip: most nights you are back late, and a five-minute stumble to bed matters more than the reviews suggest. Check riad availability in Fes on Booking.com before you land, since the medina has limited rooms and good ones sell out in spring and autumn.

For the day-by-day version of all this, see the 2-day itinerary for the closest pair or the 7-day itinerary for all six trips in one loop; for the city itself, not the trips out of it, the Fes hidden gems guide covers the medina.

MAD is a closed currency: you get it inside Morocco only, and grand taxis plus rural stalls on every one of these routes rarely take a card.