Day 16: Fez Tannery

Saturday was a very busy day in Fez and we saw many interesting sights during our seven hour walking tour with Thami.   The tannery, where they process and store leather goods, is one of the things that Fez is best known for.

In the tannery, they work with cow, camel, sheep, and goat skins.  The pictures below capture several of the key phases of this process.  What they can't adequately capture is the smell.   It is hard to describe in words but it is a combination of actual skins and pigeon droppings that the leather is soaked in to soften and cure the leather.   You will notice in the pictures below that several of us are holding mint leaves as we walk through the tanneries.   These were given to us as 'gas masks' and worked very well.

Outside of the tannery, we witnessed a wholesale market where the treated skins were being bought and sold.  These were the raw, processed skins that had not yet been dyed.

This is a picture of the wholesale trading market for leather that you see prior to walking into the tannery area.

This is the door that you walkthrough to enter the tannery area.  Although it is a well known site to see in Fez, it was not well marked and I'm not sure that we would have been able to find it without a guide.

Rahul, Tracey, and Karen with their 'gas masks' of mint leaves.   This helped to neutralize the strong smell a bit of the tannery that we viewed below our platform.

This is the view of the tannery below that we were able to see from our perch above.   If you look closely, you can see the different areas of processing where the leather is soaked in the various stages and later dyed.

A close up of some of the vats where the leather is soaked, treated, and later dyed.

This is a small corner of the overall tannery where you see the leather pieces stacked up before being soaked in the vats filled with pigeon droppings.

This is an area above the vats where many of the leather pieces are hanged to dry after being soaked in the vats below.

This was the leather store located within the tannery.   It is operated by a government Co-op.   The leather goods were amazing in color, quality, and styles.

Austin, Karen, and Rahul admiring leather shoes and purses.

Me trying on leather jackets.   I had never seen so many leather jackets in different colors and styles.

Karen standing in front of the large collection of shoes.  Several us bought a pair of slippers before leaving.   Tracey bought four pairs in red, pink, blue, and green.