The Casablanca Chronicles: The White House by the Sea

Free

Walk Casablanca's old medina from the Clock Tower to the Hassan II Mosque and hear how a ruined port became the White House: an earthquake, a sultan's walls, three faiths on one lane, cannons facing the sea and a bar born in Hollywood.

Before it was famous, Casablanca was a ruin. In 1755 an earthquake flattened the port of Anfa, and a sultan rebuilt it with new walls, new mosques and a new name: Dar al-Bayda, the White House. This walk follows that story through the old medina. Stand in the gate where the countryside came to sell. Find a mosque, a synagogue and a church a few minutes apart, and hear how all three fell quiet and came back to life in the same few years. Climb to the Sqala, where the cannons still face the Atlantic, visit the bar the whole world was looking for, and finish at the edge of the ocean beneath the minaret of the Hassan II Mosque. 9 stops, about 2.5 km, told by a local storyteller.