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Casablanca houses one of Morocco’s most unique mosques—an architectural rarity in Neo-Gothic style, an 18th-century design typically used for churches rather than mosques. Located in Roches Noires, once one of Casablanca’s most fashionable neighborhoods in the 1920s, the mosque is a converted church.
Transformed in the 1980s, this architectural gem speaks volumes about the city’s French history. Before being renamed Al-Quds, the building was known as Église Sainte-Marguerite. The church was built to serve the religious needs of the foreign communities—mainly Spanish and Italian settlers—who had begun populating the newly developed neighborhood.
The church was funded by the very man who built Roches Noires: Eugène Lendrat. He commissioned an architect named Voisenet to design it. Through Sainte-Marguerite, Lendrat sought to pay homage to his hometown in France. The church was modeled as a twin of Église Saint-Martin in Pau, a city in southwestern France.
Saint-Martin Church in Pau, built in the 1800s, was also designed in the Neo-Gothic style by architect Émile Boeswillwald. In Casablanca, Sainte-Marguerite was inaugurated in 1929. The name itself was another tribute, this time to Lendrat’s mother, Marguerite.
A rare Neo-Gothic structure in Casablanca
A visitor once described the church as having a Latin cross-shaped layout, featuring a bell tower and a nave on the west side. The three-story tower was crowned with a stone spire, with four octagonal belfries and four dog-headed gargoyles at its base, though these have since been removed. A clock was originally placed on three sides of the tower at the top of the second floor.
The main entrance is accessed through a pointed-arch porch leading to a portal, where small columns adorned with acanthus-leaf capitals extend the arches. Flanking the bell tower, two octagonal towers provide access to the bell chamber.
The nave is supported by side aisles reinforced with buttresses. A triangular frieze decorates the exterior. The side aisles have pointed-arch windows, while the nave is illuminated by oculus-shaped openings, all originally fitted with stained glass.
After the French left Morocco, the church was converted into a mosque. All Christian symbols were removed, yet the integrity of this architectural gem was preserved. Today, it is fully furnished as a mosque and serves as a place of worship for the faithful of Roches Noires, who gather there five times a day for prayer. It also attracts visitors interested in discovering the city’s architectural heritage.
