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Classes & Workshops in Fez

Fez is a city of makers — potters, weavers, leatherworkers, cooks — and it's one of the best places in Morocco to learn a craft rather than just watch one. Cooking classes are the easiest win, but pottery, calligraphy, and Arabic lessons are all on offer.

What's below is what's actually bookable, with honest notes on what's worth your time.

Cooking classes: the best half-day in Fez

Start with a souk run, end with lunch you made yourself.

Photo: Tim Wright, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Fez cooking class is the single best half-day activity in the city for most visitors. The format is well-established: meet your host, walk the souks to buy ingredients (this part alone is worth it — you'll learn more about Moroccan food in an hour of shopping than in a week of eating), then cook in a riad kitchen and eat what you made.

Expect to make the classics: harira soup, a chicken or vegetable tagine, salads, and something sweet like seffa or Moroccan pastries. Classes run 3–4 hours and lunch is the meal you cooked. Vegetarians are well catered for — say so when you book.

Keep reading: Pottery and calligraphy →

Pottery and calligraphy

Fez's pottery quarter (around Ain Nokbi, just outside the medina walls) is where the city's famous blue-and-white ceramics are made. Several workshops let visitors sit at a wheel or try tile-painting — Art D'argile, a pottery gallery a few minutes outside the medina, is set up for visitors and happy to let you have a go.

Keep expectations honest: these are taster sessions, not apprenticeships. You'll make something lumpy, paint something wobbly, and love it anyway. The workshops double as shops, so the pieces you admire on the shelves are made by people who've done it for decades.

Arabic calligraphy workshops pop up at cultural centres and some riads — ask at your accommodation or the Institut Français de Fès, which runs cultural programming alongside its language courses. A two-hour calligraphy session is a calm, indoor counterpoint to a hectic medina day.

Keep reading: Language lessons →

Language lessons

Photo: David Wright, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

If you're staying a while, the Institut Français de Fès — the French cultural institute, very active in the city — runs French and Arabic courses alongside its cultural programme. It's the most structured option for language learning in Fez.

For a lighter touch, several riads and tour operators can arrange a private Arabic or Darija (Moroccan dialect) crash session — an hour of greetings, numbers, and bargaining phrases. It pays for itself the first time you negotiate in a souk.

Practical tips

• Book cooking classes at least a day ahead — the good ones cap group sizes.
• Morning classes usually include a souk shopping trip for ingredients; wear walking shoes.
• Pottery workshops in the medina are hands-on but basic — great fun, not a masterclass.
• Ask whether lunch (what you cook) is included; it usually is.

A morning spent learning to fold a pastilla beats another morning spent shopping for one. Fez teaches best by hand.

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