Casablanca-Settat Activities: City Plus Coast
Ask what there is to do in Casablanca-Settat and the honest answer splits in two: a working port city that rewards a day or two of focused sightseeing, and a coastline stretching south that most visitors never plan for because nobody told them it existed.
The mosque that makes the trip worth it
The Hassan II Mosque anchors any list of activities here, and for good reason: a 210-meter minaret, one of the tallest in the world, rising straight out of the Atlantic on a rocky platform built to hold it. Non-Muslim visitors cannot wander in on their own. Entry is by official guided tour only, roughly 45 minutes, running Saturday through Thursday at 09:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 15:00 and 16:00, with reduced Friday hours around communal prayer. Adult admission is 140 MAD, with 70 MAD for students and residents and 30 MAD for children over 6. Shoulders and knees stay covered, shoes come off at the door, and tours pause for prayer times. A guided mosque tour with hotel pickup handles the timing so you are not left waiting outside a locked gate.
Downtown on foot: Art Deco blocks and the Habous Quarter
Boulevard Mohammed V and Place Mohammed V carry one of the densest concentrations of 1920s and 1930s Art Deco and Mauresque architecture anywhere, from the clock-towered Wilaya to the old Grande Poste. A short tram ride away, the Habous Quarter, built in the 1920s as a planned “New Medina,” offers calmer arcaded lanes than a typical old town: almond pastries at Pâtisserie Bennis, babouches, brass lanterns, and none of the aggressive hustle bigger medinas are known for. Casamémoire , the local heritage association, maps these buildings in detail on its own site if the facades catch your eye enough to want names attached to them.
Where the region actually starts: El Jadida
This is the part of “Casablanca-Settat activities” that a plain city guide skips. El Jadida sits about 100 kilometers southwest, roughly 1 hour 15 by car or 1 hour 25 by train, and it is not a Casablanca neighborhood, it is a separate coastal town built around a 16th-century Portuguese fortress. Inside the ramparts, the Portuguese Cistern is the payoff: a Gothic-vaulted underground chamber where a single shaft of light hits a shallow sheet of water and throws a mirror image onto the stone ceiling. The whole fortified old town is UNESCO-listed as the Portuguese City of Mazagan . A full-day private tour to El Jadida covers the ramparts, the cistern, and the harbor market in one trip out of Casablanca.
Numbers worth knowing before you go
The Moroccan Dirham is a closed currency, so you exchange on arrival and keep the receipts if you want to convert leftovers back; expect roughly 9.30 to 9.50 MAD per US dollar and 10.75 to 10.90 MAD per euro. The Casablanca Tramway runs four lines across the city for 8 MAD a ticket with two hours of free transfers, which covers Casa-Voyageurs, downtown, and the Aïn Diab seafront without needing a taxi. Red petit taxis are metered; insist on the meter before the car moves. For the regional trains and the Al Boraq high-speed line to Rabat, ONCF’s own timetable page is the source to check before you book anything else around it.
Verdict: give the mosque and downtown one full day, then decide whether El Jadida’s cistern or Oualidia’s oyster lagoon pulls harder, because doing both properly in a single visit means an early start and a late return. For the Art Deco walk in more depth, the walking tours guide breaks the route down block by block.
Buy your mosque tour ticket at least a day ahead in high season; the onsite office sells out its afternoon slots first.