Discover Morocco

Your private driver meets you at Mohammed V International Airport and takes you to your hotel in Casablanca. Take the afternoon to rest or walk the elegant Maarif neighbourhood, before a stroll along the Ain Diab corniche as the Atlantic turns gold in the evening light. Tonight, you're in Morocco.

• Private airport transfer
• Ain Diab Corniche
• Casablanca hotel

Begin with a guided interior tour of Hassan II Mosque — one of the world's largest, built by 30,000 artisans over six years on a platform above the Atlantic. Stroll through the historic medina and visit the Museum of Moroccan Judaism before driving to Rabat. In the capital, visit the Mohammed V Mausoleum (a masterpiece of white marble and carved cedar, with Royal Guards on horseback), the Hassan Tower, and the blue-and-white Udayas Kasbah overlooking the Bou Regreg river.

• Hassan II Mosque (interior)
• Museum of Moroccan Judaism
• Mohammed V Mausoleum
• Udayas Kasbah

Drive north through the Rif Mountains foothills to Chefchaouen — a mountain city so beautiful it seems almost imagined. Every surface is painted in blues ranging from pastel to indigo, fading and layering over centuries of repainting. Arrive in the early afternoon with time to wander the medina without a schedule — through the Plaza Uta el-Hammam, along the washing fountain, up to the Andalusian garden above the kasbah for views over the blue rooftops and the Rif peaks behind. Stay for the golden hour, when the blue walls glow amber and the muezzin echoes through the valley.

• Chefchaouen Blue Medina
• Plaza Uta el-Hammam
• Kasbah & Andalusian Garden
• Golden hour photography

Drive south to Meknes, the imperial city Sultan Moulay Ismail built to rival Paris. Stand before Bab el-Mansour — the most ornate gateway in North Africa — and explore the vast palace grounds and the Sultan's enormous granaries. Continue to Volubilis, a UNESCO-listed Roman city spanning 40 hectares, where brilliantly coloured mosaic floors depicting Orpheus, Bacchus, and mythological creatures still lie exactly where Roman families once walked above them. Arrive in Fes, Morocco's most complex and rewarding city.

• Meknes Bab el-Mansour
• Moulay Idriss holy town
• Volubilis Roman ruins (UNESCO)
• Fes arrival

Fes el-Bali is one of the wonders of the world — a 9th-century city with no cars, no new buildings, and no significant changes to its urban fabric in over a thousand years. Your licensed local guide reveals its layers: the Attarine Medersa (a 14th-century theological school whose courtyard is one of the most beautiful enclosed spaces in the Islamic world), the Chouara Tanneries (where leather has been processed in the same stone vats since the 11th century), the Mellah (Jewish quarter), and the gates of the Royal Palace. Take lunch on a rooftop terrace with a panoramic view across the sea of minarets, rooftops, and cedar-wood balconies.

• Attarine Medersa
• Chouara Tanneries
• Jewish Mellah
• Nejjarine Museum
• Al-Qarawiyyin University

Drive south through Ifrane — the alpine Swiss-style town built by the French Protectorate, with stone chalets, a famous snow-covered lion sculpture, and a university campus of unexpected elegance. Continue through cedar forests where Barbary macaques roam free, then descend through the extraordinary Ziz Valley — a river gorge with thousands of date palms creating a dense green canopy above the arid landscape. Arrive in Erfoud, gateway to the Sahara, at sunset.

• Ifrane & cedar forests
• Barbary macaques
• Ziz Valley date palms
• Erfoud arrival

Explore Rissani — the birthplace of Morocco's ruling dynasty and once the great southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade route. Visit the Ksar Abbar ruins and the legendary market. Detour to Khamlia village for a deeply moving Gnawa music performance under a goatskin tent. Then arrive at the edge of Erg Chebbi: 50 kilometres of the most spectacular sand dunes in the world. Mount your camel as the sun begins its descent. The next 45 minutes — the slow rhythm of the camel, the dunes turning gold and amber and red — are something you'll describe for the rest of your life. Luxury desert camp awaits: dinner, drumming, and a sky of ten million stars.

• Rissani ancient market
• Gnawa music – Khamlia
• Sunset camel trek
• Luxury Sahara camp
• Desert stargazing

Rise at 5:30am. Climb the dune. Watch the world turn gold. Then travel west through the Berber heartland — past Tinghir's vast date palm oasis to Todra Gorge, where sheer 300-metre limestone cliffs create a slot canyon dramatic enough to stop your breath. Continue to the Dades Gorge, a wider valley of extraordinary sculpted red rock formations. Spend the night in a lodge perched above the valley floor.

• Sahara sunrise dune climb
• Todra Gorge 300m walls
• Road of a Thousand Kasbahs
• Dades Gorge overnight

Travel the legendary caravan route through Skoura's palm oasis and Ouarzazate's film studios to Ait Ben Haddou — the UNESCO-listed mud-brick fortress village that has been filmed by Ridley Scott, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and dozens of other directors. Your guide walks you through its thousand-year-old alleys, past grain stores still in use and resident craftspeople still making pottery and jewellery. Cross the Tizi n'Tichka Pass (2,260 metres) through the Atlas and descend to Marrakech as the evening lights begin to sparkle below.

• Skoura palm oasis
• Ait Ben Haddou (UNESCO)
• Tizi n'Tichka Pass (2,260m)
• Marrakech arrival

Full-day guided discovery of Marrakech with your licensed local expert. The Saadian Tombs — discovered behind a sealed doorway in 1917. El Badi Palace — stripped of its famous 360 carved marble columns by a later sultan, its empty ruins now haunted by storks. The opulent Bahia Palace. The dyer's souk. The lantern market. The Mellah. And as dusk falls, Djemaa el-Fna: storytellers in Arabic and Amazigh, Gnawa musicians with ceraqebs and guembri bass, acrobats in red tassels, and the rising smoke of a hundred food stalls offering everything from snail soup to fresh-grilled swordfish.

• Saadian Tombs
• El Badi Palace
• Bahia Palace
• Medina souks & Mellah
• Djemaa el-Fna at night

Drive west to the Atlantic coast and arrive in Essaouira — a UNESCO-listed fortified port city of extraordinary beauty. Blue-painted fishing boats bob in the ancient harbour. Wind-battered sea ramparts look out over the grey-green Atlantic. Inside the medina, woodworkers craft thuya root furniture and jewellers work in silver, while women outside the city press argan oil at a cooperative founded to support Berber livelihoods. Walk the ramparts at sunset with the wind at your back and seafood grilling in every direction. This is a very different Morocco — cooler, wilder, and deeply lovely.

• Essaouira UNESCO medina
• Sea ramparts & port
• Argan oil women's cooperative
• Artisan workshops
• Atlantic sunset

Drive the Atlantic coast road north, stopping in Safi — Morocco's ceramics capital, where pottery workshops line the hillside below the old Portuguese fort and artisans hand-paint dishes in the same patterns their grandparents used. Continue to El Jadida, a UNESCO-listed Portuguese coastal fort from the 16th century, whose magnificent underground cistern — a vaulted chamber with a shallow pool reflecting perfect Gothic arches — is one of Morocco's most haunting and beautiful spaces. Lunch at El Oualidia, a sheltered lagoon famous for the best oysters in Africa. Then back to Casablanca for your final evening.

• Safi pottery workshops
• El Jadida Portuguese cistern (UNESCO)
• El Oualidia oyster lunch
• Atlantic lagoon
• Casablanca final night

A final Moroccan breakfast, then your private driver takes you to Mohammed V International Airport. You've seen Morocco from its mountains to its deserts to its Atlantic shores — imperial cities, blue mountain villages, medieval medinas, golden dunes, Hollywood kasbahs, windswept port cities, and the best oysters in Africa. That's Morocco, completely discovered.