MULTI-DAY MOROCCO TOUR
11 Days Morocco Discovery Tour
A private 11-day Morocco itinerary covering Marrakech, the Sahara Desert, Fes, Chefchaouen, Rabat, Casablanca and Essaouira in one complete discovery route.
DURATION
11 Days / 10 Nights
ROUTE
Marrakech Round Trip (Full Discovery)
GROUP SIZE
2-16 People
TYPE
Private Multi-Day Tour
Tour Overview
This 11-day private tour is built for travelers who want to discover Morocco in full, without rushing. Starting and finishing in Marrakech, the route runs through the High Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert, north to Fes and Chefchaouen, along the Atlantic coast through Rabat and Casablanca, and back via Essaouira, giving you a complete, well-paced picture of the country.
Traveling in a private vehicle with your own driver-guide, this is one of our most complete multi-day Morocco tours, combining our Morocco Desert Tours route with the imperial cities, the north, and the Atlantic coast in a single Morocco itinerary.
Tour Highlights
- Explore Marrakech’s medina, palaces and souks
- Cross the High Atlas Mountains via the Tizi n’Tichka pass
- Visit the UNESCO-listed kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou
- Camel trek and overnight camp in the Sahara Desert at Merzouga
- Walk through the Todra Gorges canyon
- Discover Fes el Bali, the world’s largest car-free urban area
- Visit the Roman ruins of Volubilis and imperial city of Meknes
- Wander the blue streets of Chefchaouen
- See the Hassan II Mosque and Kasbah of the Udayas
- Relax on the Atlantic coast in Essaouira
Day-by-Day Itinerary
Day 1: Arrival in Marrakech
Your driver-guide welcomes you at Marrakech Menara Airport and transfers you to your riad in the medina, Marrakech’s historic walled old town. Founded in 1070 by the Almoravid dynasty, Marrakech has served for nearly a thousand years as a crossroads between the Sahara, the Atlas Mountains, and the Mediterranean world, and its ochre-red ramparts still enclose one of the most atmospheric old cities in North Africa.
Depending on your arrival time, your first afternoon can be as active or as relaxed as you like. Many travelers choose a gentle introduction: a stroll to Jemaa el-Fnaa, the main square, to get a first look at its snake charmers, orange-juice stalls, and henna artists before the evening crowds arrive, followed by a quiet dinner on a rooftop terrace overlooking the Koutoubia Mosque’s minaret lit up against the night sky.
This first evening is a good opportunity to rest after your flight and settle into the rhythm of Moroccan travel, with a full guided day in Marrakech to follow tomorrow and ten more days of desert, mountains, cities, and coast ahead.
Day 2: Marrakech Guided City Tour
A full day is dedicated to exploring Marrakech with your guide, starting at the Koutoubia Mosque, whose twelfth-century minaret became the architectural template for the Giralda in Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat, making it one of the most influential structures in western Islamic architecture. From there you continue to the Bahia Palace, a sprawling nineteenth-century residence built for a powerful vizier, where painted cedar ceilings and tiled courtyards reflect the domestic life of Morocco’s ruling class.
You will also visit the Saadian Tombs, a royal necropolis rediscovered only in 1917 after being sealed off for centuries, its marble mausoleums and honeycombed muqarnas ceilings ranking among the finest surviving examples of Saadian-era craftsmanship. Many itineraries also include the Majorelle Garden, a striking cobalt-blue garden estate restored by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, filled with cacti, bamboo groves, and a small Berber museum.
The afternoon leads into the souks, Marrakech’s historic market quarters, still organized by trade much as they have been for centuries, before finishing at Jemaa el-Fnaa as it transforms into an open-air theater of food stalls, musicians, and storytellers each evening, a UNESCO-recognized tradition unlike anywhere else in Morocco.
Day 3: Marrakech to Ait Ben Haddou & the Dades Valley
Today you leave Marrakech and begin the mountain crossing that defines much of southern Morocco: the Tizi n’Tichka pass, climbing to over 2,200 metres through the High Atlas. The road winds past Berber villages built from packed earth and stone, terraced almond and walnut orchards, and viewpoints that stretch across ridgelines often capped with snow well into spring.
Midway through the crossing you stop at Ait Ben Haddou, a fortified ksar that has guarded the caravan route between the Sahara and Marrakech since at least the eleventh century. Its UNESCO World Heritage status and cinematic silhouette have made it a filming location for Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, and Game of Thrones, and climbing to its hilltop granary rewards you with sweeping desert-edge views.
Continuing east through Ouarzazate, Morocco’s film-industry hub, you enter the Dades Valley, often called the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs for its dozens of fortified earthen structures set against dramatic red rock formations. You overnight in a kasbah-style guesthouse in the valley, where the cliffs glow a deep orange as the sun sets.
Day 4: Dades to Merzouga via Todra Gorges & the Sahara Desert
Before continuing east, you detour into the Todra Gorges, where sheer limestone walls rise up to 300 metres above a narrow river bed, in places barely wide enough for the road itself. It is one of Morocco’s most dramatic natural sites and a magnet for rock climbers worldwide; a short walk along the canyon floor conveys the scale better than any photograph.
From the gorges, the road continues through the increasingly arid pre-Sahara landscape, passing date-palm oases and small desert towns until you reach Merzouga, on the edge of the Erg Chebbi dune sea. In the late afternoon you trade your vehicle for a camel and set off across the dunes with a local Berber guide, watching the sand shift from gold to orange to deep crimson as the sun sets.
You spend the night at a private desert camp among the dunes, in traditional Berber-style tents furnished with proper beds. Dinner is cooked over an open fire, and camp staff typically gather afterward for traditional drumming beneath one of the darkest, clearest night skies in Morocco.
Day 5: Sahara Sunrise, Ziz Valley & the Road to Fes
Many guests rise before dawn to climb a nearby dune and watch the sunrise over the Sahara, as the first light turns the dunes from deep rose to gold. After breakfast at camp, you ride back to Merzouga and reunite with your driver for a long but rewarding day north toward Fes.
The route follows the Ziz Valley, one of Morocco’s most striking natural corridors, where a ribbon of date palm oasis winds through an otherwise stark, rocky landscape below the Ziz Gorges. You pass through the town of Er-Rachidia and climb through the Middle Atlas via Midelt, a region known for its apple orchards and, at higher elevations, its cedar forests.
By late afternoon or early evening you arrive in Fes, Morocco’s spiritual and cultural capital, and settle into a riad within or near the medina walls, with a full day of guided exploration to follow tomorrow.
Day 6: Fes Guided City Tour
Fes el Bali, founded in the ninth century, is considered the best-preserved medieval city in the Arab world and remains the largest car-free urban area on earth, its estimated 9,000 alleyways navigable only on foot or by donkey. Your guide is essential here, leading you through this labyrinth to sites that would be nearly impossible to find alone.
Highlights typically include the Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University, founded in 859 and recognized by UNESCO and Guinness World Records as the oldest continuously operating institution of higher learning in the world, along with the ornate Bou Inania Madrasa, a fourteenth-century Quranic school renowned for its cedar carving, zellige tilework, and carved stucco.
No visit to Fes is complete without the Chouara Tannery, where leather has been dyed by hand in stone vats since the eleventh century using techniques that remain largely unchanged; viewing platforms at nearby leather shops offer the classic overhead view of the tannery’s colorful pits. You will also pass through the souks, where metalworkers, weavers, and woodcarvers each occupy their own historic quarter.
Day 7: Fes to Chefchaouen via Volubilis & Meknes
Leaving Fes, you head toward Meknes, the smallest of Morocco’s four imperial cities, built up dramatically in the seventeenth century by Sultan Moulay Ismail, who envisioned it as Morocco’s answer to Versailles. You visit the monumental Bab Mansour gate, considered one of the finest examples of imperial Moroccan gateway architecture, along with the sultan’s vast former granaries and stables.
Just outside Meknes lie the Roman ruins of Volubilis, once the westernmost outpost of the Roman Empire in Africa. Remarkably preserved mosaics still cover the floors of what were once wealthy merchants’ villas, alongside standing columns of a Roman basilica and triumphal arch, set in open countryside that makes the site feel genuinely undisturbed by time.
From Volubilis, the road climbs into the Rif Mountains toward Chefchaouen, Morocco’s famous blue-washed mountain town. You arrive in the late afternoon, with time to begin exploring its cobalt-and-white streets before dinner.
Day 8: Chefchaouen, the Blue Pearl of Morocco
A full day is spent in Chefchaouen, founded in 1471 as a small Andalusian and Rif Berber fortress town, and famous today for the blue-washed walls that give the medina its dreamlike, painterly appearance. The origin of the blue is debated, with theories ranging from a Jewish refugee tradition symbolizing the sky and heaven to more practical explanations involving insect repellent, but its visual effect is undeniable regardless of the true history.
Your guide leads you through the compact medina, past the Kasbah and its small ethnographic museum, the main square of Plaza Uta el-Hammam, and the many artisan shops selling wool textiles, woven goods, and local goat cheese, a specialty of the surrounding Rif Mountains. The pace here is intentionally unhurried, with time built in to wander at your own speed and photograph the town’s ever-changing shades of blue as the light shifts through the day.
Short walks up toward the Spanish Mosque on a hillside above town offer sweeping views back over the blue rooftops, particularly rewarding at sunset, a fitting close to a day spent in Morocco’s most photogenic town.
Day 9: Chefchaouen to Rabat & Casablanca
Leaving the mountains behind, you descend toward the Atlantic coast, arriving first in Rabat, Morocco’s political capital and a UNESCO World Heritage city. Your guide takes you to the Kasbah of the Udayas, a fortified twelfth-century citadel overlooking the mouth of the Bou Regreg River, with narrow blue-and-white lanes and a peaceful Andalusian garden, followed by the Hassan Tower and the Mausoleum of Mohammed V, where Morocco’s modern royal family is entombed beneath ornately carved marble.
From Rabat, it is a short drive south to Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city and economic capital, known for its Art Deco architecture and modern, cosmopolitan character quite different from the historic medinas visited earlier in the trip.
You settle into your hotel in Casablanca, with a visit to the Hassan II Mosque to look forward to before continuing toward the coast tomorrow.
Day 10: Casablanca to Essaouira via the Atlantic Coast
Your morning begins with the Hassan II Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the world and the only one in Morocco open to non-Muslim visitors on a guided tour. Built on a promontory over the Atlantic and completed in 1993, it features a 210-metre minaret, a retractable roof, and hand-carved cedar, marble, and zellige tilework produced by thousands of Moroccan artisans.
From Casablanca, you travel south along the coast toward Essaouira, a UNESCO World Heritage fortified port city built in the eighteenth century by the French military architect Théodore Cornut. Its whitewashed medina with blue shutters and sea-facing ramparts offers a striking, relaxed contrast to the cities visited earlier in the trip.
On arrival, your guide leads a walking tour through the medina, the working fishing port, and the Skala de la Ville ramparts, before you settle in for the evening in this laid-back Atlantic town, known for its artists, its wind, and its calm pace.
Day 11: Essaouira & Departure via Marrakech
Your final morning is left free to enjoy Essaouira at your own pace, whether that means a last walk through the medina’s art galleries and woodworking workshops, a coffee at the port watching the fishing boats, or simply relaxing before the drive back.
From Essaouira, you travel back to Marrakech, roughly two and a half hours through argan tree forests unique to this part of Morocco, arriving in good time for your onward flight from Marrakech Menara Airport.
Your driver-guide sees you off at the airport, closing out a complete, eleven-day discovery of Morocco that covered the souks of Marrakech, the dunes of the Sahara, the medieval alleys of Fes, the blue streets of Chefchaouen, and the Atlantic coast at Essaouira.
What’s Included
- 10 nights accommodation (riads and kasbah-style guesthouses)
- 1 night in a private Sahara Desert camp
- Private transportation in an air-conditioned vehicle
- Professional English-speaking driver-guide throughout
- Camel trek in the Erg Chebbi dunes
- Guided tours of Marrakech, Fes, Chefchaouen, Rabat, Casablanca and Essaouira
- Entrance to Volubilis archaeological site
- Daily breakfast
- All accommodation taxes and fees
What’s Not Included
- International flights
- Lunches and dinners (except at the desert camp)
- Entrance fees to monuments not listed above
- Travel insurance
- Personal expenses and souvenirs
- Tips for your driver-guide and camp staff
Good to Know Before You Go
- This is a private tour, so your start date, pace, and overnight stops can be tailored to your preferences.
- Comfortable walking shoes are essential for the medinas of Marrakech, Fes, Chefchaouen and Essaouira, all with uneven, hilly, cobbled streets.
- Desert nights can be cold even in summer, so pack a warm layer for the evening camel trek and campfire at the Sahara camp.
- For more on the route, see our Morocco Desert Tours and other multi-day Morocco tours.
- This itinerary can be shortened or extended, and works well as a complete introduction to Morocco for a first visit.
Frequently Asked Questions
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