The French built a European hill station in the Middle Atlas. The cedar chalets and manicured gardens are still there. So is a stone lion that nobody can explain.
Ifrane sits at 1,650 metres in the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas, about an hour south of Fes. In 1929, the French Protectorate administration designated it as a summer retreat — a place where colonial officials could escape the heat of the lowland cities and pretend, briefly, that they were in the Alps. They built accordingly: pitched roofs, stone facades, wide boulevards, public gardens with clipped hedges. The result looks like a Swiss village that has been misplaced by several thousand kilometres.
The town is clean in a way that other Moroccan cities are not. This is deliberate and enforced. Ifrane is home to Al Akhawayn University, a private English-language institution founded in 1995 by King Hassan II on the model of American liberal arts colleges. The university brings money, students, and an institutional interest in keeping the town presentable.
The stone lion sits in a park in the centre of town. It was carved in 1930 by a German prisoner of war — or a French legionnaire — or a local sculptor, depending on whom you ask. Nobody has settled the question. The lion is life-sized, realistic, and slightly melancholy. It is the most photographed object in Ifrane.
In January 1935, Ifrane recorded a temperature of −23.2°C, the lowest ever measured in Africa. The record still stands. In winter, the town receives genuine snowfall, and Moroccans from the lowlands drive up to see it, build snowmen, and have snowball fights in conditions that would not impress a Norwegian but are novel for a country most of the world associates with desert.
Ifrane is the town Morocco built to look like somewhere else. It succeeded.
The Facts
- —Ifrane sits at 1,650 metres in the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas, about an hour south of Fes.
- —In 1929, the French Protectorate administration designated it as a summer retreat — a place where colonial officials could escape
- —The result looks like a Swiss village that has been misplaced by several thousand kilometres.
- —Ifrane is home to Al Akhawayn University, a private English-language institution founded in 1995 by King Hassan II on the model
- —It was carved in 1930 by a German prisoner of war — or a French legionnaire — or a local sculptor, depending on whom you ask.
- —In January 1935, Ifrane recorded a temperature of −23.2°C, the lowest ever measured in Africa.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Ifrane; Al Akhawayn University; World Meteorological Organization (temperature record); Lonely Planet
