Quartier Habous
Colonial-era planned market district of arcaded souks and workshops, still owned by a centuries-old charitable land trust.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Quartier Habous in Casablanca starts at a nearly century-old pastry shop on Rue Ibn Khaldoun, still paying rent to a landlord who can never die or sell the land beneath it. It traces that landlord back to 1916, when a wealthy trader named Haim Bendahan tried to give the sultan a stretch of open land, and to the unusual legal move that followed. French architect Albert Laprade and his colleagues then spent a decade, from 1917 to 1926, laying out the arcaded streets and covered souks around you.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Mahkama of Pacha
Sprawling Art Deco-Mauresque courthouse of carved cedar, zellige tile, and stucco lace around open courtyards.
Central Marketplace
Covered Neo-Mauresque market hall where fishmongers, herbalists, and florists trade under an octagonal seafood cupola.
Poste Maroc
Neo-Mauresque post office of ogival arches and Art Deco geometry, first building of a colonial-era administrative square.
Royal Palace
Walled royal residence with brass gates, tilework reworked by master craftsmen, and formal French-designed gardens.
GAUTHIER
Art deco district of ironwork balconies and tiled stairwells, unchanged since the nineteen thirties.
Wilaya de Casablanca-Settat
Neo-Mauresque and Art Deco government seat crowned by a fifty-meter clock tower over a colonial-era square.