Casablanca

Casablanca is the city that most Moroccan cities are not: modern, commercial, forward-looking and unapologetically cosmopolitan. As Morocco's largest city and economic capital — home to around four million people and generating nearly a third of the country's GDP — Casablanca is the engine of contemporary Moroccan life. Wide European-style boulevards lined with Art Deco buildings, a glittering waterfront corniche, a haute cuisine restaurant scene and a nightlife culture that owes as much to Paris and Beirut as to Marrakech: Casablanca is Morocco at its most globally connected and self-confidently urban.

The city's defining monument is the Hassan II Mosque, completed in 1993 on a specially constructed promontory jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. With a minaret standing 210 metres tall — the tallest religious structure in Africa and the second tallest in the world — and an interior prayer hall that can accommodate 25,000 worshippers beneath a retractable roof, the Hassan II Mosque is one of the greatest architectural achievements of the twentieth century and the only mosque in Morocco open to non-Muslim visitors.

Casablanca's Art Deco heritage is less celebrated than it deserves. In the 1920s and 30s, under the French protectorate, the city's European quarter was developed with a density of Art Deco and Mauresque architecture — a Franco-Moroccan fusion style that combined modernist geometry with Islamic decorative motifs — that rivals Miami and Buenos Aires for concentration and quality.

Beyond the monuments, Casablanca rewards those who engage with it on local terms. The Ain Diab corniche, where young Casawis surf Atlantic swells and crowd excellent seafood restaurants, has a genuine energy that no tourist itinerary captures. The Quartier Habous — a planned medina built by the French in the 1930s — is a quieter and less pressured shopping experience than the old imperial city souks.