Where to Stay in Midelt, Béni Mellal-Khénifra

What is Midelt known for?

Midelt is the commercial centre for a large farming hinterland and one of Morocco's principal towns for mining, with lead, gypsum, and fossils drawn from the Ahouli and Mibladen workings nearby. Height sets it apart. Sitting on the plateau between the Middle Atlas and the High Atlas makes it one of the highest large towns in the country, and one of the coolest inland.

What are the main landmarks in Midelt?

The Priory of Our Lady of the Atlas is the building outsiders come for, founded by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in 1926 as the Kasbah Miryam des Soeurs. Jbel Ayachi dominates everything south of the town. The Ahouli and Mibladen mines are the other draw, worked for lead and gypsum and still turning up minerals and fossils, and the ksour of the old Aoutat n-Ayt Izdeg settlement stand around the modern streets.

What is the history of Midelt?

Before the French protectorate this was not a town at all but a cluster of ksar called Aoutat n-Ayt Izdeg, with villages scattered through the fertile ground around. The modern name is a French rendering of timidelt, meaning a dish-cover, after the shape of a local hill. The post came for the minerals: the French established it to work the lead, gypsum, and fossils at Ahouli and Mibladen, and the mines paid for a railway running down to the Mediterranean coast.

Midelt was electrified in 1930, before anywhere in Morocco except Casablanca. The nuns came earlier still. The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary founded their house here in 1926.

Independence in 1956 returned the town to Moroccan control, and it is now the seat of Midelt Province.

Where is Midelt?

Midelt sits on the high plains around the Moulouya River, on the main road running north to Fes and Meknes and south to Errachidia. The Middle Atlas rises on one side and the High Atlas on the other. Jbel Ayachi stands south of the town and holds the spring that supplies the region, which matters more here than any river does, since the plateau is dry ground made workable by water off the mountains.

What is the climate of Midelt?

Midelt has a cold desert climate, and the altitude is what makes it liveable, cooling the days enough to leave it among the most temperate of Morocco's inland towns. Winter bites hard. When damp cold air pushes down from the north-west the temperature can drop well below freezing, though rarely for more than a few days at a stretch, and snow is a normal part of the season with moderate rain falling through the year.

How do you get to Midelt?

Midelt sits on the main road across the Atlas and most people arrive on it. Fes and Meknes lie north, Errachidia south towards the desert, and the town is the natural halt between them. The old mining railway ran to the Mediterranean coast.

Roads now carry what it used to.