Casablanca

Casablanca is Morocco’s largest city and its economic capital, on the Atlantic coast about 240 km north of Marrakech. It is a working city of more than three million people rather than a tourist one. Most visitors give it half a day, and the half day is worth having.

Is Casablanca worth visiting?

Honest answer: worth a stop, rarely worth a stay.

Almost everyone who lands in Morocco lands here, because Mohammed V is the main international airport. What the city gives you in return for an afternoon is the Hassan II Mosque, a downtown of 1920s and 1930s architecture that most guidebooks undersell, and the experience of a Moroccan city that is not performing for anyone.

What it does not give you is a medieval medina, souks worth the name, or a reason to book three nights. If you have twelve days in the country, Casablanca gets one of them at most.

You have landed at Mohammed V. Should you sleep here?

Only if you land after about eight in the evening.

There is a train station underneath the airport terminal. From it you can be at Casa-Voyageurs in well under an hour and in Marrakech about three hours later, or in Rabat in an hour and a half. An early-afternoon arrival should keep moving.

A late arrival should stop. Book near the airport or in the city centre, sleep, see the mosque in the morning and take a midday train. That is the pattern we use for most clients arriving from North America, where flights tend to land in the evening.

The Hassan II Mosque

This is the reason to be here. It was completed in 1993, it stands partly over the Atlantic, its minaret is 210 metres, and it holds 25,000 people inside with tens of thousands more on the esplanade. Part of the prayer hall floor is glass over the sea.

It is also one of a very small number of working mosques in Morocco that admit non-Muslims, and only on a guided visit at fixed times. Buy tickets at the office beside the plaza. Visits pause around Friday prayers, and the schedule shifts in Ramadan, so check the day’s times before crossing the city for it.

Dress as you would for any place of worship: shoulders and knees covered. Shoes come off at the door.

Things to do in Casablanca city, in half a day

1. The mosque, first, on the earliest visit of the day.
2. The Habous quarter — a “new medina” built by the French in the 1930s, with arcades, bookshops and the best pastries in the city. Easier to walk than a real medina and quite deliberately not one.
3. Art deco downtown, around Place Mohammed V and the Boulevard Mohammed V. Casablanca has one of the largest concentrations of 1920s–30s Mauresque and art deco architecture anywhere, much of it shabby, some of it restored.
4. The central market on Rue Allal Ben Abdallah, for fish and flowers rather than souvenirs.
5. The Corniche at Aïn Diab at sunset, which is where the city goes to walk.

Casablanca runs in French more than any other Moroccan city — menus, signage, half the conversation. If you search in French, que faire à Casablanca returns far more useful local listings than anything in English will.

Casablanca beaches, and the Atlantic

The Aïn Diab strip along the Corniche has beach clubs, pools and restaurants, and it is where the city spends its weekends. The sand is fine, the water is Atlantic-cold most of the year, and there are rip currents — swim where there are people and, in summer, lifeguards.

For a beach as the point of the holiday, Essaouira further south is the better answer, and even there the appeal is the wind rather than the water.

Casablanca or Marrakech?

If you are choosing one, choose Marrakech. It has the medina, the souks, the palaces, the food and the day trips into the mountains and the desert.

Casablanca is the better city to live in and the weaker one to visit. Choose it over Marrakech only if you are here on business, if your flights make it easier, or if modern Moroccan architecture and a real working port interest you more than a souk does.

Rick’s Café, and what the film has to do with the city

Americans ask, so: the 1942 film was shot entirely on sound stages in California. Not one frame of it was filmed in Morocco.

Rick’s Café near the old medina is a real restaurant, opened in 2004 by a former American diplomat and built to resemble the set. It is well done, it is expensive, and it is knowingly a piece of theatre. Go for the piano and the story, not for a piece of history.

Getting out of Casablanca

Route	Realistic time
Casablanca → Marrakech, by train	~3h
Casablanca → Rabat, by train	1h – 1h 30
Casablanca → Fes, by train	4h
Casablanca → Tangier, Al Boraq high-speed	~2h 10

Trains leave from Casa-Voyageurs, not from the older Casa-Port, for most long-distance routes. The Al Boraq to Tangier is the fastest train in Africa and worth taking for its own sake. More on the network in getting around Morocco, and the practical side of arriving in safety in Morocco.

Everywhere the trains go is on our destinations page.

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We meet a lot of clients at Mohammed V and drive them straight south, and we tell most of them the truth: one night in Casablanca, the mosque in the morning, and then the country starts.

Tell us when you land and we will build the route.