Rue du prince Moulay Abdallah

The guide to Rue du prince Moulay Abdallah in Casablanca opens with a shopkeeper watching his staff shrink from fifteen to five, a small sign of a bigger shift on this street. It goes back to the early 1970s, when Casablanca-born architect Jean-Francois Zevaco closed the strip to cars and built it as a pedestrian stage lined with 1930s art deco facades. You'll hear how the crowds that once filled it for suits and linen and shoes began drifting toward the city's new shopping malls, and what the merchants who stayed behind make of it. Look up at the decorative lighting strung between the buildings as you walk.