Sources minérales de Chefchaouen (Ras El Maa)

Ras El Maa is the celebrated natural freshwater spring emerging directly from the rock face at the entrance to the medina of Chefchaouen in the Rif Mountains of northern Morocco, where bicarbonate-rich mineral water flows year-round to feed the city's historic fountains, laundry pools, and the river that cascades through the blue-painted streets of one of the Arab world's most photographed cities. The spring, whose name means source of water in Arabic, is the hydrological lifeline of Chefchaouen — the Blue City — and has sustained the town since its founding by Moorish and Jewish refugees from Andalusia in 1471, their memories of Iberian fountains and water gardens encoded in the town's hydraulic infrastructure and urban layout. Drinking or bathing in the Ras El Maa waters connects visitors to an unbroken chain of human settlement that has depended on this single spring source for over 550 years of continuous Moroccan urban history.