Things to Do in Médina

Casablanca's Médina is the city's oldest quarter, and it wears its age openly, crumbling ochre walls pressed up against mobile phone repair stalls, the sharp tang of cumin and dried fish drifting through lanes too narrow for a car to pass. Unlike the famous medinas of Fes or Marrakech, Casablanca's Médina was never preserved for tourism. It remained a working neighborhood, which means you'll find it considerably rougher around the edges, and considerably more honest for it. The souks here sell plastic buckets alongside handmade leather slippers. The cafés are full of men reading newspapers at 11am on a Tuesday. The whole place hums with the particular energy of a neighborhood that doesn't quite know it's supposed to be a destination. The Portuguese-era seafront bastions, the Sqala du Port, give the western edge of Médina its most dramatic architecture: thick whitewashed walls with cannon ports facing the Atlantic, built in the 18th century and now draped in geraniums and bougainvillea that soften the military austerity. Inside the walls, the old city's street grid reflects centuries of organic growth, with dead-end alleys branching off from slightly wider dead-end alleys. Navigation is difficult. Getting slightly lost is probably the point. Médina draws a mix of local shoppers, a trickle of curious travelers who've wandered from the Hassan II Mosque, and Moroccans from the wider city who know where to find particular craftspeople and spice merchants. It lacks the carpet-seller saturation of tourist-oriented medinas, which some visitors find refreshing and others find slightly underwhelming. That tension, authentic but unglamorous, is probably its defining quality.

Casablanca's Médina sits in the northwest of the city, roughly between the port and the Hassan II Mosque. Petit taxis, the small beige-and-red metered cabs, are the most practical way to arrive and depart; they're cheap by most European standards and the drivers tend to know the main medina gates without needing an address. From the modern city centre around Place des Nations Unies, Médina is walkable in around ten minutes heading northwest along Boulevard Mohammed V. Once inside, the only way to navigate is on foot. The lanes are too narrow and too irregular for anything else. The main arteries (Rue Chaouia, Rue de Fes) run roughly north-south and give a useful orientation axis. But expect to backtrack occasionally. The No. 9 and No. 15 city buses stop near the medina's southern edge, connecting to the Ain Diab beach strip and the modern downtown respectively. Bring a map. Or don't.