Why it looks like this

Rabat's oldest streets are at the river mouth: the Kasbah of the Udayas above the Atlantic, the whitewashed medina behind it, and the unfinished minaret of the Hassan Tower from the 12th century, when the Almohads dreamed of a great capital here.

That capital finally arrived in 1912, when resident-general Lyautey moved Morocco's government from Fez and had planners lay a ville nouvelle of garden avenues beside — not through — the medina. UNESCO listed Rabat in 2012 precisely for this dialogue: a modern capital and a historic city sharing one map.