Architecture of Casablanca

The architecture of Casablanca is diverse and historically significant. Casablanca, Morocco's economic capital, has a rich urban history and is home to many notable buildings in a variety of styles. Throughout the 20th century, architecture and urban development in Casablanca evolved in a way that was simultaneously specific to the city's contexts, and consonant with international ideas. Anfa, as the settlement in what is now Casablanca was known, was built by the Romans according to the Descrittione dell’Africa of Leo Africanus. The city is located at the mouth of Wādi Būskūra on the Atlantic Ocean in the Chaouia plain, known as Tamasna under the Barghawata. It was destroyed by the earthquake of 1755 and rebuilt by Sultan Muhammad III of Morocco, who employed European architects, and it was renamed Ad-dār al-Bayḍā (الدار البيضاء). The sqala, the medina walls, and the two oldest mosques date back to this period. The 1906 Algeciras Conference gave the French holding company la Compagnie Marocaine permission to build a modern port in Casablanca. The French bombardment of Casablanca the following year destroyed much of the city, which at the time consisted of the medina, the mellah (Jewish quarter), and an area known as Tnaker. One of the first French constructions was a clock tower in the likeness of a minaret, an early example of a style called Neo-Mauresque, which would characterize much of Casablanca's architecture in the early colonial period, particularly civic and administrative buildings. Under the French Protectorate officially established in 1912, the resident general Hubert Lyautey employed Henri Prost in the urban planning of Casablanca. Prost's radio-centric plan divided the city into the ville indigène, where the Moroccans would live, and a ville nouvelle for the Europeans fanning out to the east. Many buildings in Art Nouveau and Art Deco were designed by architects such as Marius Boyer in the ville nouvelle through the 1930s, while the French colonial apparatus experimented with the urban planning of neighborhoods such as the Hubous and the Bousbir.