You can navigate your way around the walled medina in the Moroccan city of Fez by its smells. Entering from the north through Bab Guissa, you get the smell of freshly worked wood and pungent resin as you pass the furniture makers. Turn right, and you’re seduced by the fresh mint amongst the fruit sellers, followed by grilled food at the food stalls of Achabine. In the centre of the medina at the shops around the shrine of Moulay Idriss the air becomes sweet, even sickly, with perfume.

The shrine and the nearby Kairaouine mosque are the epicentre of a maze. Fez, the former capital of Morocco, ...

 

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