Casablanca is where Morocco goes to work. It is the country's economic capital and its largest city, the port that handles the trade, and the airport most visitors actually land at. Travellers often skip it, which is a fair choice for a short trip and a mistake for a longer one.
What it has is a particular kind of architecture. Between the 1920s and the 1950s the city was built at speed in a style that mixed art deco with Moroccan craft, and the result, sometimes called Mauresque, exists at a scale you will not find elsewhere. Add the Hassan II mosque, finished in 1993, whose prayer hall opens onto the Atlantic and whose minaret is among the tallest in the world.
Casablanca is not a museum city, and that is the interest of it. A day here is worth more than its reputation suggests.
Built partly over the water, with a 210 metre minaret and a retractable roof. It is one of the few mosques in Morocco that non Muslims may visit, on a guided tour.
Boulevard Mohammed V and the streets around it: facades from the twenties and thirties where French deco geometry meets zellige and carved plaster.
The administrative heart, with the courthouse, the prefecture and the wilaya clock tower around a fountain, and a genuinely good bookshop culture nearby.
Smaller and later than the great medinas, but the fish market and the working port are the honest version of the city.
The Atlantic seafront where Casablanca goes in the evening: seafood, breakers, and the mosque lit at the far end.
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