Casablanca Travel Guide

Many travellers pass straight through Casablanca. They land at its airport, step onto a train and head for Marrakech or Fes, and the city remains a name from an old film rather than a place they have seen. That is a pity, because Casablanca is the Morocco of today: ambitious, crowded, hard-working, stylish and full of contradictions. It is where the country does business, makes music, watches football, invents fashion and argues about its future.

Casablanca does not try to charm you the way older cities do. There are no labyrinthine souks on the scale of Fes, no red ramparts like Marrakech. Instead you find something rarer: a whole city centre built in the first half of the twentieth century, when architects from France and Morocco experimented with Art Deco, neo-Moorish and modernist styles on a scale seen almost nowhere else. Look up from any boulevard in the centre and you will see carved balconies, wrought-iron railings, geometric friezes and curved corners, some freshly restored, some fading gently in the salt air.

And then there is the ocean. The city faces the Atlantic along a long coastline, and the great Hassan II Mosque stands at the water’s edge with its minaret rising high above the waves. To the west, the Corniche of Ain Diab runs past beaches, rocky points and surf breaks where the whole city comes to breathe at weekends.

A young city with an old name

Casablanca feels modern, and most of what you see is barely a century old. Yet the site has a long story. A town called Anfa stood here in the Middle Ages, and was destroyed by the Portuguese in 1468. In the eighteenth century the sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah rebuilt it as a walled town and gave it the Arabic name Dar al-Bayda, “the White House”. Spanish merchants translated that as Casa Blanca, and the name stuck.

The real transformation came in the twentieth century. After the French landing of 1907 and the protectorate of 1912, Casablanca was chosen as the country’s economic capital. A great modern port was built, planners laid out a new city, and people arrived from every corner of Morocco and from across the Mediterranean. In a few decades a modest port town became one of the largest cities in Africa. Today it is home to more than three million people, the headquarters of most of the country’s banks and companies, and one of the busiest ports in Morocco.

The character of the city

Casablancans, known as Bidaouis or simply Casaouis, have a reputation in Morocco for speaking fast, working hard and moving quickly. The city is louder and more hurried than anywhere else in the country, and it can feel overwhelming on a weekday morning when the traffic is at its worst. But it is also open-minded and cosmopolitan. Young women in jeans walk beside older women in djellabas; office workers in suits share café tables with fishermen; Darija, French and, increasingly, English mix in the same sentence.

It is also a city of strong neighbourhood identities. The working-class districts of the east and south gave Morocco some of its best-loved musicians and footballers, and its two great clubs, Raja and Wydad, inspire a passion that divides families. The leafy villas of Anfa, the boutiques of Maarif and Gauthier, the narrow lanes of the old medina and the neo-Moorish arcades of the Habous quarter each feel like a different town.

Who Casablanca suits best

• Architecture lovers, especially anyone interested in Art Deco, modernism and twentieth-century urban planning.
• First-time visitors arriving by air who want a gentle day or two before travelling on by train.
• City-break travellers who enjoy food, cafés, galleries, nightlife and urban energy more than ancient monuments.
• Business travellers with a free afternoon or weekend to fill.
• Travellers curious about modern Morocco, its economy, music, football and everyday life.

If you are searching for the Morocco of postcards, Casablanca alone will not give it to you. But it is the perfect place to begin or end a journey, and it is an excellent base for exploring the Atlantic coast, from Rabat to El Jadida and Azemmour.

How to use this book

The chapters follow the order in which most people plan a trip. We begin with history, because the city’s layout and architecture make far more sense once you know how quickly it grew. Then come the practical chapters on arriving, getting around and choosing where to stay, followed by the sights, the hidden corners and Art Deco walks, ready-made itineraries, food, customs and shopping. The final chapters cover day trips, practical information, useful phrases and a checklist to help you plan.

Throughout the book you will find three kinds of highlighted box. Local tip boxes share what our team has learned on many visits to the city. Good to know boxes explain customs and practical details. Avoid this boxes point out common mistakes. We deliberately do not print exact prices, opening hours or phone numbers: they change too often, and an out-of-date figure is worse than none. Instead we tell you what to expect and what to check locally.

And yes, we will talk about the film. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman never set foot in the city for it, but the legend of Casablanca still draws visitors from around the world. The real city is busier, more complicated and, we think, far more interesting than the Hollywood version. Give it a couple of days and it may surprise you.