Casablanca is barely 250 years old above ground, yet it holds Morocco's densest layer of modern history: an Alaouite walled port, a French planner's laboratory, a Jewish museum unique in the Arab world, and the 1943 conference that set the war's terms.
Casablanca's walled town, rebuilt from the 1770s after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake levelled old Anfa. Enter at Place des Nations Unies and wind past the shrine of Sidi Bou Smara, brass souks and Ettedgui Synagogue, restored 2016.
The 1769 seafront bastion raised by Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah, its Spanish-cast cannon still trained on the Atlantic. The ramparts wrap the medina's northern edge; the courtyard café sits inside the old powder magazine.
A cluster of whitewashed houses on a tidal rock off the Ain Diab shore, built around the tomb of a 16th-century Sufi saint. Non-Muslims cannot enter the koubba but may cross at low tide and walk the alleys of seers and healers.
The medina's landward gate, head of the old caravan road to Marrakech, with wall sections running toward Boulevard Tahar El Alaoui. Late sun separates the rough Alaouite stonework from the smoother 1910s French repointing.
Built 1948-52 by Auguste Cadet: 64 rooms of carved cedar, zellij and painted stucco for the pasha's court and state receptions, a Protectorate commission executed in pure Hispano-Moorish craft. Still a working prefecture.
Henri Prost's 1916 administrative square, the pivot of his Casablanca plan: the Wilaya clock tower, the Palais de Justice, Bank al-Maghrib and the 1918 central post office ring a fountain that turned a port town into a capital.
Paul Tournon's 1930 white cathedral, cast in reinforced concrete with Gothic ribs and Moroccan geometry, deconsecrated after independence in 1956 and now an exhibition hall. The tower stair opens over Parc de la Ligue Arabe.
Where Roosevelt and Churchill met in January 1943 and announced the demand for unconditional Axis surrender. The Anfa Hotel was demolished in 2013, but Villa Mirador, Roosevelt's residence, still stands on Boulevard Panoramique.
The only Jewish museum in the Arab world, opened 1997 in a former orphanage in the Oasis district. Torah scrolls, Fez silverwork, embroidered caftans and two reconstructed synagogue interiors trace two millennia of Moroccan Jewish life.
Laid out from 1916 by Albert Laprade and Auguste Cadet: a French-planned 'Arab town' of arcaded lanes, the Moulay Youssef mosque, the royal palace wall and the bookseller arcades that still supply Casablanca's Arabic titles.
A 1940s villa on Rue du Parc holding the collector Abderrahman Slaoui's orientalist travel posters, Fez ceramics, crystal flacons and Berber silver jewellery — a private record of how Morocco was pictured and sold abroad.
Georges-Ernest Desmarest's 1922 municipal slaughterhouse: 4.5 hectares of concrete halls in the workers' district that fed the 1950s independence movement. Closed in 2002, held by artists since 2009 as a cultural fabrique.