Morocco
Chefchaouen
A whole mountainside rinsed in blue, and the town still argues over who started it.
Chefchaouen sits on a fold of the Rif, and almost every wall in it has been washed some version of blue: powder, cobalt, the grey-blue of a winter sky. The lanes are stepped and narrow, climbing past Place El Haouta and its ornate fountain to Plaza Uta el-Hammam, where a fifteenth-century kasbah and the Grande Mosquee look out over the tea tables.
The kasbah came first. Rachid Ben Ali raised it in 1471, a squat square of bastions and quadrangular towers built to hold the town, and the medina grew up around its walls. Its left wing has held an ethnological museum since 1985, with Rif instruments, pottery and embroidery shown beside weapons that once defended the fortress. Nobody can settle the blue: some residents trace it to the Jewish quarter, some to the water at Ras el-Maa, some simply say it keeps a house cool, and older Chaouni remember a medina that was mostly white. Behind the town the Rif rises into Talassemtane National Park and the Bouhachem reserve, sixty thousand hectares of cedar, fir and pine crossed by paths to Kalaa, Tissouka, Azilane and the Akchour falls.
Solo
The medina is small enough to learn in a morning and steep enough to keep you moving all day. Cafe Clock's half-day cooking workshop sends you into the souq to buy your own four courses, spice shop and butcher included.
Couple
Book the tiled hammam at Riad Cherifa to yourselves for ghassoul clay and an oil massage, then eat late at Sofia, where the kitchen sits three metres from the table.
Friends
Give Akchour a full day. The river path runs up to the falls and to the natural arch that stands twenty-five metres above them, and it is a proper walk rather than a stroll.
Family
Place El Haouta and its fountain make a flat pause between climbs, and the kasbah museum's instruments and old weapons hold children's attention far longer than another blue alley will.
- The kasbah on Plaza Uta el-Hammam was built in 1471 by Rachid Ben Ali, and the medina grew outwards from its walls.
- Its ethnological museum, open since 1985, holds Rif instruments, pottery and embroidery alongside weapons from the fortress itself.
- Talassemtane National Park begins beside the town boundary, with routes running to Kalaa, Tissouka, Azilane and the Akchour waterfalls.
- Chefchaouen goat's jben is listed on Slow Food's Ark of Taste, set with fig sap and sold by its makers at the region's weekly souks.
Berber eggs at Cafe Clock, poached in a spicy tomato sauce with jben, the creamy Riffian goat cheese, eaten up on the roof terrace.
Pastela rolls and vegetarian couscous at Sofia, cooked beside its handful of outdoor tables, with mint lemonade to follow.
Broken Hill
Australia
Twelve sandstone sculptures on a hilltop where the outback stretches to a vanishing point.
Kars
Turkey
Russian-grid streets and crumbling art nouveau facades in a frontier city where winter means minus thirty.
Assos
Turkey
A temple of Athena perches on volcanic rock above the Aegean, Lesbos shimmering on the horizon.
Russell
New Zealand
New Zealand's first capital — once damned by missionaries as the Pacific's hell-hole.
Dades Valley
Morocco
Five tonnes of Damask rose petals disappear into one kilo of perfume.
Tafraout
Morocco
Pink granite boulders above almond trees that blossom white in February.
Imouzzer Ida Outanane
Morocco
Winter rain wakes a cliff cascade above white villages, honey stalls and terraced argan.
Aït Bouguemez Valley
Morocco
Dinosaur tracks survive on the valley floor among irrigated fields and earthen villages.