Palais de Justice

This guide to the Palais de Justice in Casablanca traces how two homesick Frenchmen from Lorraine, General Hubert Lyautey and planner Henri Prost, shaped a grand administrative square meant to echo their hometown's royal plaza. It follows the young architect Joseph Marrast, who finished the courthouse in the early 1920s wrapping French colonial law in Moroccan dress, and the craftsmen behind its zellige tile and carved screens. Look up at the doorway copied from a madrasa's teaching hall as you listen for what that borrowed form was really meant to say.