Palm promenades
Long walks lined with palm trees.
Reda benkhadra — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Petar Milošević — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ideophagous — CC BY-SA 4.0 · C messier — CC BY-SA 4.0 · mustapha ennaimi — CC BY 2.0
Arab League Park is the historic green heart of central Casablanca, a public park of about 30 hectares. The French architect Albert Laprade laid it out from 1916 under the planner Henri Prost as Parc Lyautey, named after the Resident-General Hubert Lyautey; after independence it took the Arab League's name. A renovation costing about 100 million dirhams reopened it in May 2021. Pillars and arches salvaged from the old Anfa prison, demolished in 1916, were set among the trees as a pergola. A sports complex followed in 1936 and later the Yasmina funfair, but by the 2010s the park was run-down. Works begun in 2016 restored its early 20th-century landscape and reunited its two halves. Today palm-lined promenades run between lawns and more than 50 species of trees and plants, some a century old. The fountain is a channel of small cascades and jets inspired by Morocco's traditional irrigation canals. There are play areas, a fitness trail, sports grounds, a skate park, cafés and kiosks. Beside the old arches, Daniel Buren's 2015 installation mixes brightly coloured arches with the stone ones; meant to last a month, it was rebuilt to stay. The park lies in the Sidi Belyout district, about 500 m south-west of Mohammed V Square, and the former Sacred Heart church, an Art Deco landmark, stands at its edge. Tram T4 has ended here since September 2024, and T1 stops at Mohammed V Square. Allow one to two hours; the Hassan II Mosque is about 2.3 km north as the crow flies.
Long walks lined with palm trees.
Cascades and jets recalling Moroccan irrigation canals.
Old prison arches beside Buren's coloured ones.
Boulevard Moulay Youssef, Sidi Belyout district, central Casablanca
From the old Anfa prison, known as the Portuguese prison, which stood beside the Sidi Belyout shrine near the port until it was pulled down in 1916 for a road from the port to the new European town. The historian André Adam held it to be a Moroccan building where captives of the Salé corsairs were kept in the 17th and 18th centuries, and Christian prisoners left graffiti on its columns.
Since summer 2022 it has opened from 7:00 to 21:00, the Moroccan press reported, after residents asked for longer than the first hours of 8:30 to 19:00; Casablanca's regional tourism council gives the same hours on its official website. Hours can change, so check at the gate.
