3 Days in Casablanca

Hassan II wanted the biggest mosque in Morocco and, as far as the plan went, the biggest outside Mecca. It was designed by the French architect Michel Pinseau, work began on 12 July 1986, and it opened in 1993. About 6,000 craftsmen spent five years on the plaster, cedar and zellige tilework, and since the state couldn't pay for all of it, much of the money came from public donations. The prayer hall holds 25,000 people, the minaret rises 210 meters, the roof slides open in minutes and a laser beam points toward Mecca at night. One persistent myth is wrong: there's no glass floor over the waves.

This is one of the few mosques in Morocco that non-Muslims can enter, and only on a guided tour. Between 16 September and 14 March the tours run Saturday to Thursday at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 and 15:00, and on Friday at 9:00, 10:00 and 15:00; from 15 March a 16:00 tour is added. Ramadan has its own shorter timetable. The tour has three stages: the prayer hall, the minaret hall and the ablution hall. It's worth every dirham.

From the mosque, walk east along Boulevard Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah with the ocean on your left and the medina ramparts coming up on your right. It's flat, it's free and it shows you Casablanca as the working port it is, with the minaret behind you the whole way.

If it rains, take a petit taxi instead.

La Sqala is built into the old bastion of the medina wall, a defense that dates from the sultan's rebuilding after the earthquake, and the cannons, ramparts and gates are still there. Today it's a restaurant serving a modern take on traditional Moroccan food.

It's touristy, though plenty of the guests are Moroccans, and the setting is as much the point as the food. That makes it an easy first sit-down meal after the traffic outside. Bands often play in the evening.

This is Casablanca before the French: a walled town of about 60 hectares, rebuilt by Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah after 1755 and bombarded again in 1907. The Sqala bastion and two of the oldest mosques date from his rebuilding. The southern gate, Bab Marrakech, is where merchants from the south entered, and the old Mellah, the Jewish quarter, lay just inside it.

Be honest with yourself about what it is. It's small and lived-in, nothing like the medinas of Fes or Marrakech, and in under an hour you've seen it. Walk in from La Sqala, wander the lanes and leave through Bab Marrakech, one of three gates of the Medina of Casablanca, where you can pick up a taxi to the Corniche.

Take a taxi to the Corniche, the oceanfront district west of the mosque. Decades ago it was the resort end of town, and in 1958 Ain Diab hosted a round of the Formula One World Championship. Today the older hotels on the sea side look tired and the newer ones are fancier.

Come for the sun, not the sights. Walk the beach, pick any ocean-view cafe and watch the Atlantic go orange. Further west is the islet of Sidi Abderrahman with a white shrine that non-Muslims can't enter, but the little streets around it are fine to explore.

Let's be clear: the 1942 film was shot on a Hollywood studio lot, and no Rick's Café Americain ever existed in Casablanca. This one was opened on 1 March 2004 by Kathy Kriger, a former American diplomat, in a restored 1930s mansion built against the medina wall, with a courtyard, horseshoe arches and a resident pianist who plays jazz every evening, and As Time Goes By on request, which is to say often.

It's a film set that serves dinner, and by most accounts a good one: seafood, pasta and meat, with a wine and spirits list. You pay a premium for the story, so go for the building and the music, not for a bargain.

The French called it the nouvelle ville indigène. In 1916 the planners Henri Prost and Albert Laprade drew the Habous as a new "medina" for Moroccans, with arcaded streets, workshops and a mosque, but with garden-city sewers and light. It's a colonial idea dressed as a Moroccan town, and yet today it's one of the most pleasant places in Casablanca to walk. The Al-Mohammadi Mosque, started in 1934, copies the Kutubiyya minaret of Marrakech and the Qarawiyyin courtyard of Fes. Non-Muslims view it from the outside.

The Mahkama du Pacha, the courthouse built in 1941-42, is the showpiece. Because the war had taken all the steel and cement, it was built brick by brick in the old way, with carved cedar, stucco and green-tiled roofs. Getting inside is the hard part. It's a working government building with no regular visiting hours, so don't count on it: the facade and the surrounding arcades are the part you can rely on, and a local guide may get you further.

Close to the courthouse, Pâtisserie Bennis is the shop guidebooks send you to. The famous order is cornes de gazelle, the crescent-shaped almond cookies. Buy a few and eat them with a mint tea.

Bennis is also known for its pastilla, with pigeon or farm chicken, which you have to book in advance.

Before 1948 there were between 250,000 and 350,000 Jews in Morocco, the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. Fewer than 2,500 remain. This museum, set in a former Jewish orphanage built in 1948 in the Oasis district, was founded in 1997 and is the only museum devoted to Judaism in the Arab world. King Mohammed VI reopened it on 20 December 2016 after a restoration.

The collection is quiet and personal: ritual objects, a bimah from a Casablanca synagogue (c. 1944), embroidered costumes, Amazigh Jewish jewelry, reconstructed synagogues and a silversmith's workshop with the bench of Saul Cohen. It's open Monday to Thursday 10:00-17:00 and Friday 10:00-13:00, closed at weekends.

The Marché Central on Boulevard Mohammed V is the city's central covered market, a short walk from the port. Fish is the reason to come: Morocco is the world's largest exporter of sardines, and in a port city they make a cheap, good lunch, alongside calamari, shrimp and salad.

Casablanca was a laboratory for the French. After 1912 Prost laid out a new city of wide avenues east of the medina, and the architects of the 1920s and 1930s covered it in art deco, streamline moderne and a local blend called neo-Moorish. Start at United Nations Square, the old souq kbir or Grand Socco. The clock tower the French built here in 1908, after the bombardment, was demolished in 1948, and a replica went up in 1993. Walk to Place Mohammed V, the old administrative square, where the Excelsior hotel of 1912-14 and the other civic buildings mix Moorish arches with deco lines.

The best deco is on the streets between: apartment blocks like the Bendahan building of 1935, in the paquebot (ocean liner) style, and the Lévy-Bendayan building by Marius Boyer. The association Casamémoire has campaigned to protect all of it since 1995, and Morocco has put the city's 20th-century architecture forward for UNESCO.

If you have energy left, walk west to the edge of the Arab League Park, where the former Sacré-Cœur church (Paul Tournon, 1930) stands. It stopped being a church after independence in 1956 and is now a cultural center, so the facade is the sure part of the visit.

Al Mounia is an old-fashioned Moroccan restaurant around a courtyard with a hundred-year-old tree, and it's in every guidebook, so it fills with visitors early. The cooking is traditional Moroccan, with couscous as the dish it's praised for, and a long wine list.

Order a couscous, a tagine or a pastilla and share.

The Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur began a mosque here in the late 12th century that would have been the largest in the western Muslim world. When he died in 1199 the work stopped. What stands today of the Hassan Tower is a minaret left at 44 meters and a field of 348 stumps of columns, which look more moving unfinished than they could have done finished.

Opposite is the mausoleum of Mohammed V, the father of independence, opened in 1967. His sons Hassan II and Prince Abdallah lie beside him. Non-Muslims can see the tomb chamber from above. Take a taxi or the tram from the station; it's about 2 km.

Ten minutes south by taxi, Chellah is a walled necropolis that was the Roman town of Sala Colonia and later a Marinid royal burial ground in the 14th century. Roman remains sit beside a ruined Islamic complex and the tombs of sultans. It is part of Rabat's UNESCO World Heritage listing, inscribed in 2012.

A large colony of storks nests here, one pair even on top of the old minaret, and spring is the best season for them. At any time of year, the garden of crumbling stone is worth the ticket.

Rabat's medina is a UNESCO site too, but it's less crowded and less maze-like than Fes or Marrakech, which makes it easy to explore without a guide. Eat where the locals do. Inexpensive stalls around the market serve fish and salad sandwiches, bowls of beans or lentils, rotisserie chicken and home-made tagines.

The Kasbah of the Udayas is the oldest part of Rabat, a citadel on a hill where the Bou Regreg river meets the Atlantic. You enter through a stone gate of the 12th century, and inside are narrow lanes of blue and white houses, the Andalusian Garden and a small museum in a 17th-century palace.

Inside the kasbah, the Café Maure has terraces looking over the sea and the river mouth, and the habit is to sit with a pot of mint tea and a plate of sugary treats for as long as you like. It's the best place to end the day.