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Casablanca, Morocco
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Casablanca, Morocco

Morocco's business capital, not its postcard: real prices for the Hassan II Mosque, real taxi haggling, and a 115,000 seat World Cup stadium still under construction 30km away.

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Photo: John Pannell from Watford, UK (CC BY 2.0)

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Official Review rating

★★★☆☆ 3/5

Safety 4/5 · Value 4/5

Official Review ★★★☆☆

Casablanca Isn't the Morocco From Your Instagram Feed, and It Never Tried to Be

By RuinMyTrip Editorial

Casablanca is the city most travelers fly into and then leave as fast as possible, and honestly, that reputation is mostly earned. It is Morocco's largest city, with roughly 3.22 million people in the urban core and more than 4.27 million across Greater Casablanca, making it the most populous city in the Maghreb. But it did not get that size from tourism. The Grand Casablanca region pulls in about 32 percent of the …

What nearly ruins it: Casablanca was never built to entertain tourists, and it shows the moment you step outside the mosque grounds. The old medina is small and workaday rather than photogenic, there i…

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Written by RuinMyTrip Editorial from published research and official sources, not from a personal trip. It is not a traveler review and is never counted in the community rating. How we research.

Practical tips

Editorial
  • Book the Hassan II Mosque tour for one of the fixed daily slots (about 9am, 10am, 11am, and noon most days, adjusted around Friday prayers, plus a 4pm summer slot from mid-March to mid-September), since entry is guided-tour-only and you cannot walk in independently.
  • Agree on a petit taxi fare before you get in, or insist the driver starts the meter, the legal minimum fare is only around 7 dirham, so a flat quote of 50 or 100 dirham for a short ride is padded.
  • Use the tram for cross-city trips: it costs 6 dirham with a rechargeable card versus 8 dirham paying cash each time, and it runs roughly 5:30am to 10:30pm.
  • Do not go looking for the Rick's Cafe from the 1942 movie 'Casablanca,' the film was shot almost entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, with no Moroccan location footage beyond a brief scene at Van Nuys Airport.
  • From Mohammed V Airport, the train into town takes about 45 minutes and costs 50 to 70 dirham depending on class, a fraction of an unnegotiated taxi fare that can run around 280 dirham.
  • Keep phones and bags zipped away in the city center; guides flag phone-snatching by passing scooters and pickpocketing as the more common problems here, not violent crime.

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