Where to Stay in Mohammedia, Casablanca-Settat

What is Mohammedia known for?

The Samir Refinery, the principal oil refinery of Morocco, stands here and makes Mohammedia the centre of the Moroccan petroleum industry, which is a heavier role than most towns of its size on this coast carry. Fedala was the older name. It held until 1960, and the harbour that carried it remains the reason the place exists, with Dream Village added to the short list of local attractions.

What are the main landmarks in Mohammedia?

Dream Village heads a short list. It is the one attraction recorded for Mohammedia, and a city better known for refining than for monuments does not carry a great deal else on the register. The Samir Refinery is the other landmark, in its way.

Industrial plant is rarely a sight worth the trip, but the refinery is what put this town on the map of Morocco, and the harbour beside it is where the older name of Fedala still belongs.

What is the history of Mohammedia?

The name changed in 1960. Until then the town was Fedala, a port on the coast between Casablanca and Rabat, and the switch to Mohammedia marks the point at which the place was given a new identity to go with a new economic role. The harbour came first.

Everything the city has done since has rested on a working port, and the industry that arrived later had that harbour to build on. Refining rewrote the town. The Samir Refinery made Mohammedia the centre of the Moroccan petroleum industry, a heavier role than a coastal town of this scale usually carries, and it fixed the city's character as a working port rather than a resort.

Casablanca-Settat is the region it answers to. Its position between Casablanca and Rabat has kept it inside the orbit of both, close enough to the larger city to share the coastal traffic and far enough out to keep a separate name and a separate beach. المحمدية is the official form. Dream Village is a late addition to a record that is short, industrial, and written mostly within the last century.

Where is Mohammedia?

Mohammedia occupies a stretch of the Moroccan coast between Casablanca and Rabat, close enough to both that the three read as one line along the water. That coast lies in the subtropics. Casablanca-Settat is the region around it, and the harbour, the refinery and the beach all fall within the same few kilometres of shore.

What is the climate of Mohammedia?

Water sets the limit on the heat. Mohammedia lies open to the sea, so the subtropical band arrives tempered here in a way it does not for the inland stretches of Casablanca-Settat, where nothing stands between the ground and the sun. The beach season is long.

That moderation is what keeps the shoreline between Casablanca and Rabat usable through the warm months, and Mohammedia holds a workable piece of it.

How do you get to Mohammedia?

Almost everyone arrives overland. Mohammedia lies on the run between Casablanca and Rabat, so the city is reached from one or the other as a matter of course, and few travellers set out for it from any greater distance. Its harbour is industrial rather than a passenger route.

Casablanca-Settat surrounds the city, the coastal corridor that carries the region's traffic passes the door without a detour, and Arabic is the language the arrangements are made in.