Casablanca

Founded by Berber fishermen as the modest settlement of Anfa in the seventh century, Casablanca endured Portuguese destruction in 1468, only to be reborn under Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah in the eighteenth century as Dar el Beida — the White House. The French protectorate era, beginning in 1912, transformed this coastal outpost into Morocco's economic engine, bequeathing a remarkable legacy of Mauresque architecture that fused Parisian art deco with traditional Islamic geometry. Today, nearly six million inhabitants inhabit a metropolis that pulses with the ambition of a city perpetually reinventing itself while honoring the layers of civilization etched into its boulevards.

Immortal lines from the silver screen may have imprinted a warm, sepia-toned visage of old Casablanca into our collective imagination, but the living city resists nostalgia with a confident stride toward the contemporary. The Hassan II Mosque — its minaret soaring two hundred and ten metres above the Atlantic, the tallest religious structure in Africa — stands as a monument to Morocco's architectural audacity, its floor of Italian glass revealing the ocean surging beneath the prayer hall. Along the Corniche, whitewashed art deco façades catch the afternoon light with an almost Mediterranean clarity, while the labyrinthine Quartier Habous, built in the 1930s as a "new medina," offers the intimacy of traditional Moroccan urban life without the frenetic intensity of Marrakech. This is a city of contrasts worn elegantly: where the soaring steel-and-glass Morocco Mall meets the weathered copper scales of the Central Market's art deco canopy.

To know Casablanca is to eat as its residents do — standing at a marble counter in the Central Market, where fishmongers will grill your just-purchased sea bream with nothing more than charcoal, coarse salt, and a wedge of lemon. Seek out a steaming bowl of *harira*, the slow-simmered tomato and lentil soup fragrant with cinnamon and fresh coriander, served alongside honeyed *chebakia* pastries at dusk during any season. The city's French inheritance lives on in its patisseries, where *cornes de gazelle* — crescent-shaped almond pastries scented with orange blossom water — rival anything on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. For a more refined evening, the restaurants of the Gauthier neighbourhood serve exquisite *pastilla au pigeon*, that impossible layering of savoury and sweet wrapped in tissue-thin *warqa* pastry and dusted with cinnamon sugar.

Casablanca's position on Morocco's Atlantic coast makes it an ideal departure point for expeditions of striking variety. Rabat, the imperial capital just ninety kilometres north, rewards a day's exploration with its twelfth-century Kasbah of the Udayas and the serene Andalusian Gardens overlooking the Bou Regreg estuary. Southward along the coast, the ceramics city of Safi has produced Morocco's finest earthenware for centuries, its hillside kilns still firing in the traditional manner. For those willing to venture inland, the fortified red-earth village of Aït Ben Haddou — a UNESCO World Heritage site that has doubled as ancient Jerusalem, Tibet, and Egypt in countless films — rises from the desert like a sandcastle sculpted by centuries of Berber hands, while the trail to Mount Toubkal Base Camp offers a gateway to North Africa's highest summit, its snow-dusted peaks a startling counterpoint to the coastal warmth.

Casablanca's modern port facilities make it one of Morocco's most accessible cruise destinations, welcoming an impressive roster of international lines. Azamara and Viking bring their destination-immersive itineraries to the city's doorstep, often pairing Casablanca with Iberian and Canary Island ports, while Cunard and P&O Cruises fold the city into grand Atlantic voyages and Western Mediterranean circuits. Princess Cruises and MSC Cruises call regularly on larger vessels, offering passengers the scale and variety that suit families and first-time cruisers alike, whereas Costa Cruises brings its distinctive Italian hospitality to the Moroccan coast. Emerald Yacht Cruises, with its intimate superyacht-style vessels, provides a more exclusive arrival — passengers stepping ashore mere minutes from the medina, the minaret of Hassan II already visible against the Atlantic sky.