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Midelt: Morocco's Quiet Apple Town Between Two Atlas Ranges

Halfway between Fes and the Sahara, Midelt sits at 1,500 m under a 3,757 m mountain. Cool air, apple orchards, weavers and old mines — a detour worth making.

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SeniorTravelWithUs • 10 min read

Most travellers meet Midelt through a car window. It is the lunch stop on the long road between Fes and the dunes, a wide street of cafés where drivers stretch their legs, buy a bag of apples and drive on. Almost nobody stays.

They should. Midelt sits at about 1,508 metres on the high plateau where the Middle Atlas ends and the High Atlas begins, and above it rises Jbel Ayachi, 3,757 metres, one of the highest mountains in North Africa. On a clear morning the whole town seems to be standing in the mountain's shadow. The air is thin and clean, the light is enormous, and in spring the orchards below town are white with blossom.

This is not a place of monuments. It is a place of quiet pleasures: a weaving workshop run by nuns, a Trappist priory that carries the memory of Tibhirine, ghost mines in a red gorge, and more than a hundred varieties of apple. For a traveller over sixty, it has one more virtue that matters a great deal in Morocco — it is cool, flat and unhurried.

A little history

Before the twentieth century there was no town here in the modern sense, only the settlements of the Ayt Izdeg, known as Aoutat n-Ayt Izdeg. The Berber families of the plateau grazed flocks between the two mountain ranges and farmed the water that came down off Ayachi.

What created Midelt was metal. The French established an administrative post in the early twentieth century to serve the lead mines being opened in the hills to the north-east, at Mibladen and Ahouli. The town grew fast around that post — so fast that Midelt received electricity in 1930, reportedly the second town in Morocco to do so, after Casablanca. Streets were laid out straight and wide, which is why walking here feels so different from a medina.

The mines wound down, and the orchards took over. Today Midelt is the capital of its province in the Drâa-Tafilalet region, home to roughly 62,000 people, most of them Amazigh (Berber), speaking Central Atlas Tamazight alongside Moroccan Arabic. It is known throughout the country as the apple city, and an apple festival is held in the autumn when the harvest comes in.

A street scene in Midelt, photographed by a visitor.

A street scene in Midelt, photographed by a visitor.

What to see

Midelt rewards slow looking rather than ticking off sights. Two or three half-days are plenty.

Jbel Ayachi and the plateau light

The mountain is the sight. It fills the western horizon, snow-capped for much of the year, and it changes colour all day — grey at dawn, gold at six in the evening. You do not need to climb anything: the road out of town towards the orchards, or simply a terrace facing west, gives you the whole ridge. Ask your hotel which side of the building faces Ayachi and book that room.

The priory of Notre-Dame de l'Atlas

In a kasbah-style compound on the edge of town, a small Trappist (Cistercian) community has lived since 2000. Its monks came from Tibhirine in Algeria, where seven brothers were abducted and killed in 1996; the cross in the chapel comes from Tibhirine, and a small memorial room keeps their portraits. This is a working house of prayer and hospitality, not a museum: if you wish to see it, write or telephone well in advance rather than arriving unannounced, and keep your visit quiet and brief. Even from outside, the simplicity of the place is moving.

The weaving atelier at Kasbah Myriem

A short drive west of the centre, Franciscan sisters have for decades run a workshop where local Amazigh women weave carpets and embroider linen, and where younger girls learn the craft and attend literacy classes. You can watch the looms, talk to the weavers, and buy directly. Prices are fixed and there is no haggling and no pressure — a relief if you have found the carpet shops of Fes exhausting.

The souk and the apple stalls

Midelt's market is a working country souk, not a tourist bazaar: wool, vegetables, tools, mint, and mountains of apples, walnuts and plums in season. Along the main road you will also find shops selling minerals and fossils dug from the surrounding hills — vanadinite, barite, geodes. Some pieces are genuine and beautiful, some are dyed or assembled; buy for pleasure, not for investment.

The chapel of the Trappist priory of Notre-Dame de l'Atlas in Midelt; its cross comes from the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria.

The chapel of the Trappist priory of Notre-Dame de l'Atlas in Midelt; its cross comes from the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria.

A day trip nearby

The best excursion from Midelt runs north-east to the old mining country, roughly 20 to 30 kilometres out, along the Moulouya river.

First comes Mibladen, a name known to mineral collectors worldwide for its extraordinary red vanadinite crystals. Then the road drops into a narrowing gorge to Ahouli, where an entire lead-mining settlement — processing sheds, staircases cut into the cliff, workers' housing, a rusting headframe — was abandoned when operations ceased in the 1970s. Red rock walls, a green thread of river, and silence. Allow half a day, and go with a local driver: the last stretch is narrow and winding, and it is not a place to be lost at dusk.

The other famous outing, the Cirque de Jaffar, is a natural amphitheatre of cedars under the flank of Jbel Ayachi. Be honest with yourself about this one. The track is unpaved, rough and slow, needs a 4x4 and an experienced driver, and can take three to four hours each way with a good deal of jolting. The scenery is magnificent; the ride is not gentle. If your back or hips protest on bad roads, choose Ahouli instead.

Stellerite crystals from Takat, near Imilchil in Midelt Province — the region is a well-known source of minerals.

Stellerite crystals from Takat, near Imilchil in Midelt Province — the region is a well-known source of minerals.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

  • Altitude. Midelt is at about 1,500 metres. That is not high enough to cause altitude sickness, but you may notice that stairs feel a little longer on the first day. Take it slowly for twenty-four hours and drink more water than you think you need.
  • Cold, not heat. This is the opposite of Marrakech. Winter nights fall below freezing and snow is common; summer afternoons can still reach the low thirties Celsius, but evenings are cool all year. Pack a warm layer even in July.
  • Flat and walkable. The town is modern, laid out on a grid, with wide pavements and gentle gradients. There are no medina alleys, no steep lanes and very few steps — one of the easiest Moroccan towns to walk in.
  • Where to stay. Choose somewhere on or just off the main road through town, or a garden hotel on the northern approach, so that cafés, a pharmacy and a bank are a few minutes away on the level. Ask for a ground-floor room: many local hotels and auberges have no lift.
  • The drive matters more than the town. Midelt is usually reached after three or more hours on the road. Break the journey at Azrou or Ifrane coming from the north, and plan your arrival for daylight — Moroccan trunk roads are best not driven after dark.
  • Facilities. There are banks, ATMs and pharmacies in the centre, and a provincial hospital, but this is a small town: bring any specific medication with you rather than expecting to find it here.
  • Pace. Two nights is the sweet spot. It turns a tiring transit day into a rest, which is exactly what Midelt is good for.

A public garden in Midelt — the town centre is flat, modern and easy to walk.

A public garden in Midelt — the town centre is flat, modern and easy to walk.

What to eat

Mountain food: warming, simple, generous. Lamb and beef tagines cooked slowly with prunes or quince, thick harira soup in the evening, berkoukes (a hearty Amazigh pasta soup) when the weather turns, and grilled brochettes with cumin and salt at the stalls along the main street.

Then there are the apples. Midelt province grows a large share of Morocco's crop, in dozens of varieties, and you will find them fresh at roadside stalls, dried, pressed into juice, and turned into jams and compotes. Walnuts, plums and local honey come from the same valleys. Buy a kilo of apples for the car; they are the best travel snack in Morocco.

Restaurants here are unpretentious. Several large places on the through-road cater to tour groups at midday and serve reliable, mild food; the small café-grills used by locals in the evening are cheaper and often better. Vegetarians do well with vegetable tagine, lentils and salads. Tap water is best avoided — stick to bottled — and mint tea, poured sweet and scalding, is the local welcome.

Musicians with frame drums and violin performing at Auberge Jaffar, Midelt.

Musicians with frame drums and violin performing at Auberge Jaffar, Midelt.

Getting there
Nearest airports Errachidia (Moulay Ali Cherif, ERH), roughly 130–140 km south, about 2 hours by road; Fes–Saïss (FEZ), roughly 200–210 km north, about 3–3½ hours. Marrakech and Casablanca are long full-day drives.
By road On the N13, the main Fes–Errachidia–Sahara highway, via Ifrane and Azrou from the north. Buses (CTM, Supratours and local lines) stop in Midelt on the Fes–Errachidia run; shared grands taxis link Midelt with Azrou and Errachidia. A private car with driver is the most comfortable option and easily arranged in Fes.
Best months Late April to mid-June, and September to late October, for mild days and blossom or harvest. July–August is hot but bearable at this altitude; December–February is genuinely cold, with snow on Ayachi and sometimes in town.
How long to stay Two nights; three if you want both Ahouli and a slow day in the orchards.
Currency Moroccan dirham (MAD). ATMs and banks in the town centre; carry cash for souks, small cafés and the crafts workshops.

Our verdict

Midelt will not dazzle you. There is no blue medina, no ochre kasbah photographed a million times, no sea. What it offers is rarer on a Moroccan itinerary: a comfortable, level, cool-aired town where nobody is trying to sell you anything urgently, set beneath one of the great mountains of Africa.

For travellers over sixty it solves a real problem. The drive from Fes to the desert is long and tiring in one push; Midelt turns it into two easy days and gives you something worth seeing in between — the weavers' looms, the little chapel with its Tibhirine cross, the red gorge at Ahouli, a bag of apples on the seat beside you.

Stay two nights. Sit facing west at six in the evening and watch Ayachi turn gold. You will understand why we keep telling people to stop here.

“In Midelt the mountain does the talking, and the town has the good manners to listen.”

Photo credits

#Morocco#Midelt#Drâa-Tafilalet
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