Where to Stay in Casablanca, Casablanca-Settat

What is Casablanca known for?

Casablanca is the economic and business centre of Morocco and the country's largest city. The sea sets the scene. The Hassan II Mosque stands on the Atlantic shore as its best-known landmark, and beyond it the city spreads from an old medina into the wider ville nouvelle.

United Nations Square sits at the heart of the centre. For many travellers Casablanca is the way in, a short run from Rabat along the coast.

What are the main landmarks in Casablanca?

Casablanca gathers its landmarks between the centre and the shore. The Hassan II Mosque rises on the Atlantic waterfront as the city's signature building, a landmark mosque looking out over the ocean. Nearby stand the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes Church and the Abderrahman Slaoui Museum, while United Nations Square anchors the ville nouvelle.

The Salle Mohammed V and the Villa des Arts de Casablanca add halls for sport and art. The old medina holds the rest.

What is the history of Casablanca?

Casablanca carries its history in two layers. The old medina marks the earlier town, a walled core of narrow streets close to the Atlantic shore. Around and beyond it spread the ville nouvelle, the newer town of broad avenues and open squares that gave the modern city its shape.

Between the two, the growth of Casablanca is written on the ground rather than in a single founding date. Its old quarter came first. The new town followed and outgrew it.

The city rose on the Chaouia plain by the Atlantic to become the economic and business centre of Morocco. Trade and industry drew people to the shore, and Casablanca grew into the largest city of the country. United Nations Square and the wide streets of the ville nouvelle belong to that later expansion, laid out well beyond the old medina walls.

The Hassan II Mosque, on the waterfront, stands as a later landmark on the same shore. The old medina and the ville nouvelle stand side by side, the two ages of Casablanca held within one city on the Atlantic.

Where is Casablanca?

Casablanca sits on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, spread across the Chaouia plain along the ocean's edge. The city faces the open Atlantic. Its seafront runs along the shore, while the ville nouvelle and the old medina fill the ground behind.

Rabat lies a short way up the coast. The setting is low and coastal, the plain on one side and the ocean on the other.

What is the climate of Casablanca?

Casablanca has a mild, subtropical climate shaped by the Atlantic. The ocean keeps the coast temperate, with warm, dry summers and milder, wetter weather through the cooler months along the shore. The sea moderates every season.

Away from the water, the Chaouia plain runs hotter and drier than the coast itself. On the shore, the Atlantic holds the extremes in check.

How do you get to Casablanca?

Casablanca is the main point of arrival for many visitors to Morocco. Most arrivals begin here. Trains run from the city up the coast to Rabat and on across the country, the main rail line following the shore.

The old medina and the ville nouvelle both lie within the compact centre. From the coast, the rest of Morocco opens up by rail and road.