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If the Hollywood image of 'Casablanca' is important to you, prepare for a shock from Casablanca. The city is further away from Oriental romanticism than any other in Morocco, and Casablanca is a modern city — and beautiful in its own respect.
The centre of Casablanca is fairly impressive. It's brand modern, with big, lively boulevards, high, white, well-kept buildings. And it's clean and efficient. People visiting Casablanca as their first city, could easily end up hating this place: There are few things here confirming the newcomers conception on the Orient. But for people having visited other parts of Morocco first, Casablanca is good! The city is modern in a Moroccan way, and an excellent example of Moroccans capacity of taking charge of the future of their country.
Among the most visible aspects of Casablanca are the wide boulevards flanked by white, tall buildings. The streets run out as the leaves of a fan from the Place de Nations Unies. This place is the focal point of downtown Casablanca, and also the point where the modern town meets the medina.
A walk around Casablanca will demonstrate clearly that Casablanca was the place that the French colonial authorities gave most attention. And money. The old colonial centre of Casablanca is not small, and refreshingly beautiful. The buildings are of a French version of Arabo-Andalucian architecture, white with soft lines, and often plenty of details.
Right in from the long Boulevard Muhammad 5, you will find the Marche Central of Casablanca.
The place is a small but high-quality version of the traditional suuqs of Morocco, and everything is aiming at the needs of the locals. And that is a thing that secures good standards.
The Marche Central has vegetables, meat, all kinds of sea food, as well as handicrafts.
On the picture to the left, you see live turtles. Turtle soup should therefore be an option for those visiting Casablanca — the sale of turtles for food is prohibited in many Western countries.
Casablanca isn't really the place to go searching from shop to shop. The city has a laidback feeling to shopping, especially if you step out from the market zone of the medina. The commercial areas reminds you principally of Europe's.
But money isn't a problem — and as far as I could determine, the handicraft shops here are not cheap — Casablanca is one of the better places in all of Morocco to buy pick up something nice and different.
The old city of Casablanca is conveniently located — just off the main town square from where all avenues radiate, and near the sea. But as you enter, you will see that it is not all that old after all, that the houses here often have a form and size which would have made them natural elements in the "new" parts of many other Moroccan cities.
But still, it is very nice, even if it is surprisingly small. The best parts of the old city is made up of shopping areas, where all types of products are sold, and you should not either miss out on the less visited quarters — the areas where people live — where colours and shapes and curves brings you far away from elegance of downtown Casablanca.
The city walls of Casablanca has a strange feeling to them — in this large city, the walls are low and unimposing. A drastic change from many other cities of Morocco, where the city walls often dominate the image of the city.
The king of Morocco at the time, Hassan 2, first mentioned this mosque in 1980, declaring that he would build it on the water, because the throne of God is on the water.
The mosque was inaugurated on August 30, 1993. It was designed by the French architect, Michel Pinseau, and has the tallest minaret in the world, with its 200 metres. There is room for 20,000 worshippers inside the mosque at the same time, and the courtyard gives space for another 80,000.
2,500 men worked on two shifts in order to complete the mosque of Hassan 2. The marble came from Agadir, the granite from Tafraoute, while the glass was imported from Venice, Italy.
The mosque was funded by donations, and the total cost was an estimated US$800,000,000.
