Casablanca-Settat: What to Actually Do
Casablanca-Settat is a region, not a single city, and that distinction changes what “activities” should even mean here: some of the best things to do sit 100 kilometers from downtown Casablanca in towns most itineraries never name.
Start with the mosque, because it decides your schedule
The Hassan II Mosque is the one sight nearly everyone builds a Casablanca day around, and access is the part worth planning first. Non-Muslim visitors enter only on an official guided tour, roughly 45 minutes, Saturday through Thursday at 09:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 15:00 and 16:00, with a shorter Friday schedule around midday prayer. Adult tickets run 140 MAD, students and residents 70 MAD, children over 6 pay 30 MAD, and under 6 is free, per the foundation’s own visitor rules . The 210-meter minaret is one of the tallest in the world, not the tallest outright since Algeria’s Djamaa El-Djazair passed it in 2024, but it is still the skyline’s obvious reference point from anywhere on the Corniche. A combined mosque and city highlights tour bundles the ticket with a driver so you are not solving Casablanca traffic on top of tour timing.
What’s actually in the city beyond the mosque
Downtown, the 1920s and 1930s Art Deco and Mauresque buildings along Boulevard Mohammed V are worth an unhurried walk on their own, especially the clock-towered Wilaya and the old Grande Poste. The Habous Quarter, a planned “New Medina” from the same era, gives a calmer version of medina shopping: babouches, brass lanterns, and pastries at Pâtisserie Bennis without the pressure tactics bigger medinas are known for. None of this is Fes or Marrakech, and it shouldn’t be sold as either; Casablanca reads as a functioning commercial capital first, with historic layers folded into a modern grid rather than preserved as a walled old town.
The real day trips, and the one that isn’t
El Jadida, about 100 kilometers southwest (roughly 1h15 by car, 1h25 by train), is the standout: a 16th-century Portuguese fortress town with sea ramparts and the UNESCO-listed Portuguese Cistern , a Gothic-vaulted underground chamber where a single beam of light hits shallow water and mirrors onto the ceiling above it. Rabat, the actual political capital, is an easier day trip in pure travel-time terms: the Al Boraq high-speed train covers it in 57 minutes, fast enough to see the Kasbah of the Oudayas and Hassan Tower and be back for dinner. A full-day Rabat trip from Casablanca runs this exact route with a guide. Marrakech is the trip to skip doing as a day: 2h40 to 3h15 each way on a conventional train makes it a six-hour round trip before you’ve done anything there, so treat it as an overnight leg instead.
Getting around without the friction
The Casablanca Tramway’s four lines cover downtown, Casa-Voyageurs, and the Aïn Diab seafront for 8 MAD a ticket with two hours of free transfers. Petit taxis are metered; insist on the meter (“compteur”) before the car moves, since fare disputes are the single most common complaint from visitors here. Uber returned to Casablanca in late 2025 alongside Careem and inDrive, which covers most of what a rental car would otherwise be needed for inside the city. Full timetables for the regional and Al Boraq lines sit on ONCF’s own booking site , which is worth checking before any multi-city plan gets locked in.
The honest verdict: one full day covers the mosque and downtown comfortably, a second day should go to El Jadida or Rabat rather than both, and Marrakech deserves its own separate trip rather than a rushed add-on. For the full breakdown of which day trip fits which schedule, see the day trips guide .
Book the mosque tour a slot ahead of when you think you need to; afternoon times sell out first in the high season.