Oujda with Bouarfa, Figuig · 10-day itinerary

Begin with the city itself

Oujda offers an eastern Moroccan urban visit that deserves more than a transfer between an arrival terminal and the coast. Start with the medina, its gates and the public spaces that interest you. Choose a connected walk and leave time for food shopping, a café pause and ordinary streets between the sights.

The medina and city gardens provide different ways to shape an outing. If history or architecture is your main interest, arrange a walk that explains specific places rather than simply promising a complete tour. Check the current access of any interior before planning the day around it.

Use the gates and gardens to orient the visit

Bab Al Gharbi and Bab Sidi Abdelouahab give the old town two named points of reference. Start by understanding where they sit in relation to your walk, then let the intervening streets become part of the visit. The Sebti Palace adds an architectural interest, while Lalla Aicha Park offers a different, greener urban setting. These are distinct reasons to spend time in Oujda before continuing toward the coast.

Choose a city walk for what you want to notice: gates and street patterns, everyday food shopping or public spaces. Keep the focus on Oujda itself for part of the stay. A Mediterranean holiday in Saidia and an inland oasis journey to Figuig may both begin with an Oujda arrival, but neither substitutes for exploring the city through which you are passing.

Make food and shopping part of the visit

Use regional food entries to recognise ingredients or dishes you want to understand. Ask a venue what it is preparing and describe any dietary needs. A culinary tradition is a reason to explore, but it does not establish today’s menu at a particular address.

In markets and working streets, ask before close photographs and keep space for people shopping or delivering goods. A craft demonstration, a retail visit and a hands-on session are different experiences; agree the purpose and any payment before taking part.

A sense of place

Bouarfa is a high-plateau and desert-edge town that helps connect Figuig, Tendrara, Oujda, Errachidia and eastern overland routes. Bouarfa's value is landscape transition, long-distance movement, mining or rail memory where interpreted, and access across the Oriental interior.

The appeal of Bouarfa comes from the meeting of desert-steppe gateway, rail memory, and overland routes, not from a single attraction.

Its position around Bouarfa makes it easy to combine with the wider geography of eastern Moroccan travel, the Moulouya basin, steppe routes and oasis gateways.

A useful visit is built around desert-steppe gateway, rail memory, and overland routes.

Read the oasis as a whole

Figuig’s ksour, palm gardens and irrigation system are connected parts of an inhabited landscape. Morocco’s UNESCO Tentative List submission describes seven ksour and the relationship between their architecture, gardens, water and community life. This is a useful way to approach the visit: look at how a settlement meets its cultivated surroundings rather than treating each community as another isolated monument.

Choose a walk with a clear subject. You might focus on earthen buildings and lanes, the edges of the palm gardens or the way water is shared through the landscape. Ask which paths are public and arrange any garden access with residents. Keep channels unobstructed and leave private homes and bathing spaces outside the visit.

Water explains the settlement

Look for the relationship between a ksar, its gardens and its water supply. The heritage described in Figuig’s UNESCO Tentative List submission includes foggaras, storage basins, distribution structures and channels, alongside the knowledge needed to maintain and share them. These are parts of one working system, rather than separate monuments to collect.

The palm gardens also have a layered agricultural structure, with different crops sharing the cultivated space. A useful guided walk can follow one theme from the built neighbourhood toward the gardens: how water reaches the plots, how shade shapes cultivation or how earthen buildings are maintained. Choose that subject when arranging the visit. It gives a short walk a clearer purpose than simply asking to see the oasis.

El Maiz and the archive view

The historical photograph in this guide identifies El Maïs, also written El Maiz, in Figuig. It comes from a postcard published in 1926. Use it as an introduction to the relationship between buildings, walls and palms, rather than a current view or a record of today’s access. A century-old image cannot establish which entrance or path you should use now.

If El Maiz is part of your walk, ask a local guide to help relate what you see today to the wider oasis. Keep the purpose of the archive clear when comparing photographs: it records a historical setting, while the living neighbourhood deserves attention on its own terms.