| The city is further away from Oriental romanticism than any other in Morocco, and Casablanca is a modern city — and beautiful in its own respect.
The centre of Casablanca is fairly impressive. It's brand modern, with big, lively boulevards, high, white, well-kept buildings. And it's clean and efficient. People visiting Casablanca as their first city, could easily end up hating this place; There are few things here confirming the newcomer's conception on the Orient. But for people having visited other parts of Morocco first, Casablanca is good! The city is modern in a Moroccan way, and an excellent example of Moroccans capacity of taking charge of the future of their country.
No other place in the country displays bigger differences between the haves and the have-nots.
If anything in Casablanca should fit the Casablanca of Bergman and Bogart, it should be the old city. It's small, consisting mainly of smaller houses, which all seem to be from the 20th century, and the alleyways dominating in other old cities, are rarely found here. There is a good market here, but look around before you buy, shop keepers here know their skills. Some thousand people live here, and in one or two spots, true beauty occurs.
A walk around Casablanca will demonstrate clearly that Casablanca was the place that the French colonial authorities gave most attention. And money. The old colonial centre of Casablanca is not small, and refreshingly beautiful. The buildings are of a French version of Arabo-Andalucian architecture, white with soft lines, and often plenty of details.
It isn't really the place to go searching from shop to shop. Casablanca has a very laidback feeling to shopping, especially out from the market zone of the medina. But Casablanca has many local clients with quite a bit of money who demand only the very best of quality.
If money isn't the matter — and as far as I could determine, Casablanca's handicraft shops are not cheap — this is one of the better places to pick up something nice and different.
The old city of Casablanca is conveniently located — just off the main town square from where all avenues radiate, and near the sea. Visitors will see that it is not all that old after all, that the houses here often have a form and size which would have made them natural elements in the "new" parts of many other Moroccan cities.
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