A common practice in speaking or writing about Fes is to accord chronological distinctions to its geographical ones. This description, for example, comes from Lonely Planet: "Traveling from the ville nouvelle to Fes el-Bali [the medina] is like literally stepping back in time." Or, several pages prior: "... for all the romance of medina life to visitors, many residents have been happy to sell up to foreigners to swap their sometimes medieval living conditions for a modern apartment in the ville nouvelle." In short: medina - medieval; ville nouvelle - modern.Thinking this way is unfair.
