The Sefrou Cherry Festival

Sefrou is a small walled town in the foothills below Fes, long known for its orchards, and every June it holds a festival around the cherry harvest that has run since the 1920s. It is on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage, which in practice recognises a community event rather than a spectacle: several days of parades through the medina, brass and Amazigh music, craft and produce stalls, sports and the crowning of a cherry queen chosen from local families. The whole town takes part and the surrounding villages come in for it, so the medina, normally quiet, is packed. Outside festival week Sefrou is worth an afternoon anyway for its compact old town, its waterfall on the edge of the centre and the orchards on the slopes above.

Highlights

• The parade - floats, brass bands and costume groups through the medina streets.
• The cherry stalls - the local crop sold by the crate through the town.
• The Amazigh music - troupes from surrounding villages performing over several days.
• The medina - the small walled old town, normally quiet, at its busiest.

When to go

The festival falls in June, with exact dates fixed locally each year and announced not far in advance, so check before committing. Accommodation in Sefrou itself is very limited during the festival and most visitors stay in Fes and come out for the day by taxi.

What to expect

This is a local event and not staged for outsiders: there is no English programme, timings slip, and you will spend a good deal of the day standing in crowds waiting for something to start. Sefrou has few tourist facilities. Outside the festival the town is quiet to the point of being sleepy, and the cherry association means nothing for the other eleven months.

Nearby

Fes is half an hour north; the cedar forests around Ifrane and Azrou lie south.