THE NEW TOWN

Built on the basis of the development plan signed by Henri Prost in 1914, the New town developed at the south of the medina, inside the Almohad enclosure, on the same site where Yaâqoub El Mansour had planned, seven centuries earlier, the creation of a large city.

The urban center is arranged around a main urban axis, Avenue du Makhzen (current Boulevard Mohammed V). This long artery is organized in two sequences. The first which is narrow of a commercial nature creates a transition with the medina. The second one is larger and monumental, receives the administrations and services managed by the central State (the Post Office, the Railway Station, the Court, the Treasury, the Bank of Morocco) in addition to prestigious hotels and a row elegant boutiques above apartment buildings that mix Neoclassical, Art Nouveau, Art Deco or modern styles with Arab-Andalusian architectural grammar. The urban axis continues towards Bab Zaër where we find, on the left, the district of the General Residence of the French Protectorate and on the right, the Imperial Palace in the Touarga district.

Born at a time when ideas of hygiene were spreading, the New Town has underground pipes for the evacuation of wastewater, numerous green spaces, squares and wide alleys allowing light to penetrate.