The Blue City That Was Closed to Outsiders

Travel Onion · 1:50

High in Morocco's Rif Mountains there's a town where the walls, the steps and the doors are all painted blue — and nobody fully agrees on why. Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 as a small fortress against the Portuguese; the name means "look at the horns", after the two peaks above it. A generation later, Muslims and Jews driven out of Spain settled here and built an Andalusian town up the hillside. Then it shut its gates. For more than four centuries it was closed to outsiders, and only a handful of Europeans are known to have got in — one of them, in 1883, disguised as a rabbi, for about an hour. When Spanish troops arrived in 1920 they found Jewish families still speaking a form of medieval Spanish. And the blue? One story says Jewish residents painted their homes the colour of the sky; another that it keeps mosquitoes away; another that it keeps the houses cool. What's certain is that people here repaint their own walls every year or two. Save this one for the trip you actually take. Follow for more places worth the trip. 📍 PLAN YOUR VISIT — CHEFCHAOUEN ✈️ Getting there: by road from Tangier, Tétouan or Fès — there's no airport or railway in town, and the medina is on foot only 📅 Best time: spring (Mar–May) or autumn (Sep–Nov) 🎯 Don't miss: the medina lanes early · Plaza Uta el-Hammam and the kasbah · the Ras el-Maa spring · sunset from the Spanish Mosque