Ifrane

The plateau around Ifrane has been used for centuries by Amazigh groups of the Middle Atlas, who grazed flocks on the high pastures and sheltered in caves and springs; the name comes from the Tamazight word for caves. The French authorities laid out the present town from 1929, during the protectorate, as a hill station where officials and settlers could escape the summer heat of Fès and Meknès. They built it deliberately in a European mountain style, with steep tiled roofs, dormer windows, gardens and pine plantations, and added a stone lion carved into rock that became its emblem.

Ifrane grew as a summer resort and later as a winter one, once a ski ground was developed at Michlifen in the mountains to the south. After independence in 1956 the town kept its resort role, and the royal family built a palace here, which drew investment, careful maintenance and the reputation for cleanliness and order that Moroccans still associate with the place.

The most significant modern change came in the 1990s, when Al Akhawayn University was founded by royal decree in 1993, with the backing of the Moroccan and Saudi sovereigns, and inaugurated in January 1995 — an English-language, American-style university unusual in Morocco. It turned a seasonal resort into a town with a permanent student population, and Ifrane is the capital of its own province. Growth since has been driven by tourism, second homes and the forestry and farming of the surrounding plateau.

Ifrane is often called Little Switzerland, a nickname that says as much about how it is marketed as about how it looks. For Moroccan visitors it is a place of snow — often the first they have seen — of sledging, of photographs beside the lion, and of jumpers and honey bought on the way home. The town works hard at its image: flower beds, swept streets and a ban on the untidiness that characterises busier places.

Underneath the resort is an Amazigh region. The surrounding countryside belongs to the Beni M'Guild and neighbouring groups, Tamazight is widely spoken in the villages and in the markets, and weaving, carpets and the ahidous, a line dance performed to drums and chanting at weddings and moussems, remain part of rural life. Ifrane is where those two worlds meet, at the weekly markets and on the roadsides where honey, apples and wool are sold.

The university gives the town a third character again: students from across Morocco and abroad, lectures and concerts on campus, and cafés that stay busy in term time when the holiday villas are shut. Relations between students, townspeople and mountain villages are generally easy, though the gap between the manicured resort and the poorer villages a few kilometres away is obvious and openly discussed.

About 13,500 people live in Ifrane, a figure that multiplies on winter weekends and in August. Many houses are second homes owned by families from Casablanca, Rabat and Fès and stand empty for much of the year, which shapes everything from shop opening to property prices; younger local families increasingly live in the cheaper districts on the edges of town or in nearby villages.

Work comes from tourism and hotels, the university, the provincial administration and the royal estate, along with forestry, apple orchards, and sheep and cattle on the plateau. Winters without snow hurt the town's trade badly. Unemployment pushes many young people down to Meknès and Fès for work or study.

The daily rhythm is quieter than in Moroccan cities. Mornings are for the market and the schools, afternoons are slow, and the centre fills in the evening with families walking, students in cafés and children in the parks. Heating and firewood are a real cost from November to March, and a heavy snowfall can leave outlying villages cut off for a day or two.

Ifrane's kitchen is Moroccan with a mountain accent. Trout, raised and caught in the cold rivers and lakes of the Middle Atlas, appears on almost every menu, fried or grilled with lemon and cumin, and is the dish most associated with the area. Tagines are heavier here than on the coast — lamb with prunes, beef with quince, chicken with olives — and harira, the lentil and chickpea soup, is eaten year-round rather than mainly in Ramadan.

The plateau's produce fills the shops: apples and pears from the orchards around Ifrane and Azrou, walnuts, mountain cheeses made from sheep's and goat's milk, and honey in many varieties, from dark cedar and jujube to pale thyme and orange blossom, sold in jars along the main streets. Amazigh households in the surrounding villages still make rough barley bread and tagines cooked slowly over wood.

In the centre, cafés serve mint tea, café au lait and French-style pastries that are a legacy of the protectorate, alongside pizzerias and grill houses aimed at weekend visitors. Sfenj, the ring-shaped doughnuts, and msemen, flaky griddle bread eaten with honey and butter, are the standard breakfast, and stalls sell hot chickpeas and roasted nuts on cold evenings.