Hassan II Mosque

The Hassan II Mosque is a mosque in Casablanca, Morocco, built between 1986 and 1993 on a rock outcrop extending over the Atlantic Ocean, commissioned by King Hassan II to mark his sixtieth birthday and designed by the French architect Michel Pinseau. Its minaret, at 210 meters, is among the tallest religious structures in the world, and the mosque's retractable roof and glass floor panels over the ocean were engineered so that worshippers could pray over the water, evoking the Quranic description of God's throne as resting upon water. Built largely by traditional Moroccan craftsmen using cedar wood, marble and granite sourced from across the country, the mosque can accommodate around 25,000 worshippers inside and a further 80,000 in its surrounding courtyard, making its prayer hall among the largest in the world. It remains one of the few mosques in Morocco open to non-Muslim visitors.