The Fes Tanneries: An Honest Account of What You Are Looking At

The tannery experience in Fes is organized in a specific way that shapes what visitors see and how they see it, and understanding the organization helps you understand what you are actually encountering.

The Chouara tannery — the largest and oldest of Fes’s three major tanneries, located in the Adoua al-Andalus quarter near the Bab Guissa — is visible from above, from the terraces of the leather shops that surround it on three sides. The shops give visitors access to the terrace views in exchange for the understanding (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) that they will be exposed to the shop’s leather goods before or after the viewing. The leather goods — bags, jackets, shoes, poufs — are made from the same hides processed in the tannery below, and the shop’s commercial interest in maintaining the terrace access is straightforward.

The view from the terrace is genuinely spectacular: a densely packed array of circular stone vats — approximately a hundred of them at the Chouara — filled with dyes and treatment liquids in vivid colors (the saffron yellow of the traditional natural dye, the vivid turquoise of the chrome-tanned blue, the dark indigo, the plant-derived reds), with workers moving between and inside the vats, treading and turning the hides with their feet and lower legs. The overall view is visually extraordinary — a composition of color and labor that has no equivalent in any other working craft site I know.

What Is Actually Happening in the Vats?

The tanning process visible at the Chouara involves several distinct stages, each corresponding to different vats:

The white vats: the fresh hides, after initial cleaning and de-hairing, soak in a mixture of pigeon dung and water — the ammonia in the pigeon dung opens the hide’s pores and softens the collagen structure, making the hide receptive to the tanning agents that follow. The pigeon dung for the Chouara comes from the city’s pigeons and is collected specifically for this purpose. The white vats smell strongly — the ammonia and the organic decomposition in the pigeon dung mixture is the primary source of the tannery’s famous odor. Mint sprigs are distributed to visitors specifically to hold under the nose during the viewing; they are somewhat effective.

The brown vats: the treated hides soak in a vegetable tannin solution — historically from oak galls, sumac, and other plant sources, now increasingly from mimosa bark extract — that cross-links the collagen proteins of the hide and prevents putrefaction. This is the actual tanning, the chemical process that converts perishable animal skin into durable leather. The duration of this stage determines the leather’s final character: longer tanning produces stiffer, more durable leather; shorter tanning produces softer leather with less durability.

The color vats: the tanned hides are immersed in dye solutions — saffron for yellow, indigo for blue, pomegranate skin for a pale yellow-green, henna for orange-brown in the traditional palette; synthetic dyes for the range of vivid colors in contemporary production. The workers tread the hides in the color vats with their feet, working the dye into the leather by physical agitation. This is the visually spectacular element of the process — the colored feet and lower legs of the workers, the vivid dye liquids, the intense colors of the full vats.

Who Works in the Tanneries and What Are the Working Conditions?

The tannery workers — dabbagha — are predominantly men from the Fes medina and its surrounding region, working in a physical environment that is genuinely harsh: standing in chemical solutions for hours, exposed to ammonia and organic decomposition products, working in enclosed vats that provide no weather protection. The wages are at the lower end of Moroccan craft labor, though the work is highly skilled and the knowledge of the tanning process is specialized.

The working conditions at the Chouara have improved since the mid-20th century — protective equipment that was absent in earlier generations is now used more consistently, and the shift from some of the most toxic traditional chemical processes to safer alternatives has reduced some of the occupational health hazards. But the fundamental physical demand of the work has not changed, and the romanticized version of the tanneries that the terrace-and-tour format presents — the “ancient craft unchanged for 1,000 years,” presented as color and exoticism — often obscures the labor conditions of the workers who are producing the leather.

Both things are simultaneously true: the tannery is visually extraordinary and represents a genuine continuity of traditional craft knowledge, and the conditions of the people producing it deserve to be part of the account rather than background to the spectacle.

When Is the Best Time to Visit and What Should You Prepare?

Morning — before ten — when the light is best for the colors and before the tour groups create the density that makes the terrace views crowded. The tannery is most active and most colorful in autumn and early winter, when the dying season is in full production. In summer, reduced production means fewer vats active and less of the color composition that makes the view what it is.

The smell: prepare sincerely rather than perfunctorily. The mint sprigs the shops offer help but don’t eliminate the experience. The pigeon-dung ammonia smell in particular is immediate and strong. It diminishes in intensity after approximately five minutes as your olfactory receptors adapt — the experience of the first five minutes is stronger than the experience of the fifteen that follow.

The Invisible Invitation

Stand at the terrace edge and look down directly — not at the overall composition first, but at one specific worker in one specific vat. Watch what he is doing: the repetitive treading motion, the lifting and turning of the hide, the rhythm of the work. He has been doing this since early morning. He will do it until early afternoon. The vat he is in is the same vat design that has been used at the Chouara since the 11th century. The process he is performing is essentially the same process. The leather on the bag the shop behind you is trying to sell you came from a hide that passed through a vat like this one, through hands like his. This is the full picture of the tannery experience. The color is spectacular. The labor that produces it is also real. Both deserve your attention.

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