Casablanca
Morocco's largest city and economic engine on the Atlantic
Casablanca is Morocco's commercial powerhouse, a white-walled port spread along the Atlantic where Art Deco boulevards from the French protectorate meet glassy modern finance districts. Larger than the royal capital Rabat and far busier, its metropolitan area of around four million makes it the biggest city in the Maghreb after Cairo's far-off rival. The name, Spanish for white house, lent itself to the 1942 film that fixed the city in the global imagination, though the real Casablanca is less a place of intrigue than of industry, shipping and ambition.
The city occupies a low, gently rising coastal plain on Morocco's central Atlantic shore, exposed to the cooling ocean that tempers its climate. Its great modern landmark, the Hassan II Mosque, stands partly over the water on a promontory, its minaret among the tallest in the world. Behind the corniche and the old medina, the city extends inland in a dense grid of mid-century apartment blocks and newer suburbs, served by the busiest port in the country and a growing tramway network that knits the sprawl together.
Settlement here goes back to the Berber town of Anfa, a medieval port that was destroyed and rebuilt more than once, including after the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 rocked the coast. The modern city took shape under the French protectorate after 1912, when planners laid out the boulevards and the white facades that still define its center. Today Casablanca is Morocco's financial capital, home to the country's stock exchange and the headquarters of its major banks and corporations, the engine room of a kingdom whose political heart lies up the coast in Rabat.