Casablanca City
Casablanca, in Arabic Dar-al-Beida, its name does not come from Spanish, but from Portuguese, because in 1770 an earthquake destroyed a nearby Portuguese settlement called Casa Branca, then the inhabitants moved to the new settlement created by Sultan Mohammed III and kept the name, later the Spanish created a port and put the name of Casablanca to the city. It is, therefore, a city without a powerful past, the city’s population in 1860 was 8,000h. 20,000 in 1907 in 1930 are already 106,000, today is the largest Moroccan city with more than 4 million.
The visitor who does not expect to find a large medina will find it, but tiny and uninteresting, Casablanca is the economic engine of the country, the largest port in Africa, the great industrial city. Casablanca flees from the topics of what is expected of a Moroccan city, and often one does not know which side of the strait is.
Large arteries and tree-lined avenues draw the contemporaneity of skyscrapers and buildings of contemporary architecture. Casablanca is composed of three modules, the small medina, which goes from the port to the United Nations Square, medina which shows you how the city was when the French thought of it and expanded it to become the largest Moroccan port during the protectorate.
Precisely the protectorate endowed this city with its second module and the most attractive in terms of tourism. the city created by the French. Although it may sound strange, Casablanca is one of the cities with the greatest architectural and ornamental art decoration heritage in the world.
The great French architects did not dare to build with the newly discovered reinforced concrete, they did not see it as convenient in the great French cities full of history and decided to experiment with the expansion of Casablanca, was great luck for this white city, became for years in the great research laboratory for the best architects and urban planners of France and the best Italian designers. Airy and rational avenues, art decoration buildings of various heights, beautiful streets and squares, an impeccable central administrative space with all the needs of a modern city of the early twentieth century with the market, post office, town hall, courthouse, an imposing church, once dedicated to the Heart of Jesus and now for exhibition uses, all art design!
To stroll through this city is to visit a museum of this architectural style, and the view rests on facades, railings, door designs, and decorative elements, all in an impeccable art style. Away from the center, another immense period building is the old abattoir.
Finally, there is the city created after independence, with endless streets crowded with cars like any other European city, with the presence of major brands, contemporary art galleries, and bars where you can drink alcohol. In this city, a lot of European businessmen rush with their cars with tinted windows to participate in a meeting, attend an international meeting, or visit a fair.
In Casablanca, as we already indicated, what is imposed on the tourist is to walk through the city created by the French between 1912 and 1940, walk through the large park called the Arab League, visit the Museum of Judaism, the only museum of Jewish culture in a Muslim country, look at the Vila des Arts, a charming exhibition space for the dissemination of the artistic avant-garde in the container of an Art Deco villa.
Another Casablanca may also be of interest to the visitor, the new media known as the Hubus, it is all a creation from the 1920s but with a successful aroma of a traditional medina. In Casablanca what is offered to the visitor is an unexpected look at the country outside of clichés, the most contemporary face of all of Morocco.
For tourists, a few years ago a new element was added to visit, the new and immense Hassan II mosque right on the edge of the sea with an immense beam of laser light that indicates the direction towards Mecca, this is one of the very few mosques visitable by non-Muslims throughout Morocco, the rest due to a prohibition, not Koranic, but of the French colonial power, prevents non-Muslims from accessing it.
The Hassan II Mosque is allowed entry to non-Muslims as long as it does not coincide with prayer times. Finally, it is also advisable to stroll along the numerous beaches and cliffs in its surroundings and taste the excellent fish cuisine from its unbeatable gastronomic offer.
