Daily Archives: 17/11/2019

Sunday, 17th November 2019 The priority in Casablanca is to visit the Hassan II Mosque, the only mosque in Morocco which non-Muslims are allowed to visit. The hotel concierge said it would be a pleasant walk in the sunshine, but the route he directed us to, took us through an area where there was much heavy building work going on and the pavement was often out of bounds so we were walking with the traffic. We felt we could find a more picturesque route back but the works seem to be designed in part to create a more picturesque approach to the mosque. On the way we spotted Rick’s Café which Matilda, who studied film, was adamant had to be on the itinerary and was already scheduled for later that evening. We carried on towards the Hassan II Mosque which was built between 1987 to 1993 by [unsurprisingly] King Hassan II, the father of the current monarch, Mohammad VI. The mosque was originally scheduled for completion in 1989 to coincide with King Hassan II’s sixtieth birthday but [also unsurprisingly] this was delayed. It combines traditional Moorish architecture with modern technology and is simply beautiful: the exterior is predominantly polished granite with […]