MULTI-DAY MOROCCO TOUR
10 Days Tangier to Marrakech Grand Tour
A private 10-day Morocco tour from Tangier through Chefchaouen, Fes, the Sahara Desert, the High Atlas and Essaouira, finishing in Marrakech.
DURATION
10 Days / 9 Nights
ROUTE
Tangier to Marrakech (North to South)
GROUP SIZE
2-16 People
TYPE
Private Multi-Day Tour
Tour Overview
This 10-day private tour traces Morocco from north to south, starting in the strait-side city of Tangier and finishing in Marrakech, with the Sahara Desert, the imperial city of Fes, the blue town of Chefchaouen, and the Atlantic coast at Essaouira woven into the route between them.
Traveling by private vehicle with your own driver-guide, this itinerary is one of our most scenic Morocco multi day tours, combining our Morocco Desert Tours route with the north and the coast in a single Morocco itinerary for travelers arriving via Tangier.
Tour Highlights
- Explore Tangier’s medina and Kasbah overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar
- Wander the blue streets of Chefchaouen in the Rif Mountains
- Discover Fes el Bali, the world’s largest car-free urban area
- Cross the Middle Atlas and Ziz Valley to the Sahara Desert
- Camel trek and overnight camp in the Erg Chebbi dunes at Merzouga
- Walk through the dramatic Todra Gorges
- Visit the UNESCO-listed kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou
- Relax on the Atlantic coast in Essaouira
- Finish in Marrakech with a full guided city tour
Day-by-Day Itinerary
Day 1: Arrival in Tangier
Your driver-guide meets you at Tangier Ibn Battouta Airport and transfers you into the city, perched on the Strait of Gibraltar where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea and Europe sits visibly just fourteen kilometres away across the water. Tangier has a distinct history among Moroccan cities, having functioned as an international zone jointly administered by multiple foreign powers for much of the early twentieth century, which drew writers, artists, and diplomats and left the city with a cosmopolitan character still visible today.
Settling into your riad in the Kasbah or medina, you have the afternoon free to get your first taste of Morocco at a relaxed pace. A short walk to the Kasbah Museum, housed in a former sultan’s palace, offers context on the city’s layered past, while the nearby terraces overlooking the strait give sweeping views across to Spain on a clear day.
In the evening, wander the medina’s narrow lanes or relax over a mint tea at one of the historic cafés once frequented by figures like Paul Bowles and William Burroughs, absorbing the particular literary and artistic atmosphere that has defined Tangier for generations before the tour heads into the mountains tomorrow.
Day 2: Tangier Highlights & Chefchaouen
Before leaving Tangier, your guide can include a short morning visit to the Caves of Hercules, a dramatic sea cave along the coast whose ocean-facing opening is famously shaped like a map of Africa, tied in local legend to the mythical hero Hercules resting there between his labors. From here, the drive turns inland and climbs into the Rif Mountains toward Chefchaouen.
Chefchaouen, founded in 1471 as a small Andalusian and Rif Berber fortress town, is instantly recognizable for the cobalt-blue walls that wash its entire medina, a tradition whose origins are debated but whose visual effect is unforgettable. Arriving in the early afternoon, you have time to explore the town’s cobbled lanes, the central Plaza Uta el-Hammam, and the small Kasbah museum at your own pace.
The Rif Mountains surrounding Chefchaouen are known for their cool climate and green, terraced hillsides, quite different from the arid landscapes further south, and an evening walk up toward the Spanish Mosque on a hillside above town rewards you with sweeping views over the blue rooftops at sunset.
Day 3: Chefchaouen to Fes
Leaving the Rif Mountains, you travel south toward Fes, passing through Ouezzane, a historic religious town known as a center of Sufi pilgrimage and for its distinctive red-tiled roofs, a design feature more common in Morocco’s north than further south. The drive offers a scenic transition through changing terrain, from mountain forest to the agricultural plains surrounding Fes.
Arriving in Fes by early afternoon, you settle into your riad within or near the medina walls, with the full day tomorrow dedicated to exploring what many consider Morocco’s cultural and spiritual capital. If time allows, a gentle first walk into the medina’s outer streets helps orient you before tomorrow’s guided exploration.
Fes has served as a center of learning, religion, and craftsmanship since its founding in the ninth century, and this evening is a good moment to simply absorb its atmosphere over a traditional dinner before the more intensive sightseeing begins.
Day 4: Fes Guided City Tour
Fes el Bali, the old walled city, is considered the best-preserved medieval urban center in the Arab world and remains the largest car-free urban area on earth, its roughly 9,000 alleyways navigable only on foot or by donkey. Your guide is essential here, leading you confidently through this labyrinth to landmarks that would be nearly impossible to locate independently.
You will visit 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 Bou Inania Madrasa, a fourteenth-century Quranic school celebrated 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 using techniques essentially unchanged since the eleventh century; nearby leather shops offer viewing terraces over the colorful pits. The afternoon continues through the souks, where metalworkers, weavers, and woodcarvers each occupy historic quarters dedicated to their craft.
Day 5: Fes to the Sahara Desert via the Middle Atlas
Today’s drive takes you from Fes across the Middle Atlas Mountains, through Ifrane, a town built in a distinctly European alpine style during the French Protectorate era and sometimes nicknamed Morocco’s Switzerland for its stone chalets and cedar forests. Continuing south through Azrou and Midelt, the landscape shifts from cedar woodland to the drier terrain that precedes the Sahara.
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 dramatic Ziz Gorges. By late afternoon you reach Merzouga on the edge of the Erg Chebbi dune sea, where you exchange your vehicle for a camel and set off into the dunes with a local Berber guide.
Watching the sand shift from gold to orange to deep red as the sun sets is one of the most memorable moments of any Morocco itinerary. You spend the night at a private desert camp in traditional Berber-style tents, with a campfire dinner and traditional drumming under a sky renowned for stargazing.
Day 6: Sahara Sunrise & Todra Gorges
Many guests rise before dawn to climb a nearby dune and watch the sunrise over the Sahara, as 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 the day’s onward journey.
The route heads west toward the Todra Gorges, where sheer limestone walls rise as high as 300 metres above a narrow river bed, in places just a few metres wide. It is one of Morocco’s most dramatic natural sites and a popular destination for rock climbers worldwide; a walk along the canyon floor conveys its scale far better than photographs alone.
You continue into the Dades Valley, often called the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs for its dozens of fortified earthen structures set against dramatic red rock formations, where you overnight in a kasbah-style guesthouse as the cliffs glow deep orange at sunset.
Day 7: Dades Valley to Ait Ben Haddou & the High Atlas
Continuing west, the road passes through Ouarzazate, Morocco’s film-industry hub, before reaching Ait Ben Haddou, a fortified ksar of earthen clay buildings that has guarded the caravan route between the Sahara and Marrakech since at least the eleventh century. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, its cinematic silhouette has made it a filming location for Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, and Game of Thrones, and climbing to its hilltop granary rewards you with sweeping views.
From Ait Ben Haddou, you begin the crossing of the High Atlas Mountains via the Tizi n’Tichka pass, climbing to over 2,200 metres through Berber villages built from packed earth and stone, past terraced orchards and viewpoints stretching across ridgelines often capped with snow well into spring.
You descend into Marrakech in the late afternoon, with the evening free to rest after a full day of mountain driving, or to take an early stroll near your riad before a full guided day in the city tomorrow.
Day 8: Marrakech Guided City Tour
A full day is dedicated to exploring Marrakech, beginning at the Koutoubia Mosque, whose twelfth-century minaret became the architectural template for the Giralda in Seville and the Hassan Tower in Rabat. From there you continue to the Bahia Palace, a sprawling nineteenth-century vizier’s residence with painted cedar ceilings and tiled courtyards, and the Saadian Tombs, a royal necropolis rediscovered in 1917 after being sealed for centuries.
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, offering a very different atmosphere from the medina’s historic sites.
The afternoon leads into the souks, Marrakech’s historic market quarters still organized by trade, before finishing at Jemaa el-Fnaa as it transforms after dark into an open-air spectacle of food stalls, musicians, and storytellers, a UNESCO-recognized tradition unlike anywhere else in Morocco.
Day 9: Day Trip to Essaouira
Today’s excursion takes you to Essaouira, a UNESCO World Heritage fortified port city on the Atlantic coast, roughly two and a half hours from Marrakech through argan tree forests unique to this part of Morocco, where local goats can sometimes be seen climbing into the branches to feed.
Built in its current form in the eighteenth century by the French military architect Théodore Cornut on the orders of Sultan Mohammed III, Essaouira’s whitewashed medina with blue shutters offers a striking contrast to Marrakech’s red-ochre walls. Your guide leads a walking tour through the fishing port, the sea-facing Skala de la Ville ramparts, and the calm, art-gallery-lined streets that have made the town a favorite of artists for decades.
You have free time for a seafood lunch at the port, where grilled fish is served fresh just steps from the fishing boats, before returning to Marrakech in the evening for your final night.
Day 10: Departure from Marrakech
On your final morning, depending on your flight time, your guide can take you for a last stroll through the medina or to any sites you may have missed earlier in the tour, whether a final visit to the souks for last-minute shopping or a quiet coffee overlooking the Koutoubia Mosque.
This is a natural moment to reflect on the full arc of the journey, from the strait-side streets of Tangier and the blue town of Chefchaouen, through the medieval alleys of Fes and the dunes of the Sahara, to the Atlantic coast at Essaouira and the souks of Marrakech.
Your driver transfers you to Marrakech Menara Airport in good time for your onward flight, bringing to a close a complete ten-day journey across Morocco from north to south.
What’s Included
- 9 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 Tangier, Chefchaouen, Fes, Marrakech and Essaouira
- 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 and museums
- 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 Tangier, Chefchaouen, Fes, Essaouira and Marrakech, 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 works well as an entry or exit point for travelers combining Morocco with a trip to Spain via the Strait of Gibraltar.
Frequently Asked Questions
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