Rabatculture & etiquette

Morocco has been a party to the Hague Apostille Convention since 14 August 2016. If your country is too, a public document — police certificate, birth or marriage certificate, degree — carrying an apostille from your own authorities is accepted here without consular legalisation. That turns a multi-week consular errand into a same-week one done at home. People still queue at Moroccan consulates for legalisation they no longer need.

Beyond three months you must hold one. The card costs around MAD 100 and issues in about thirty-five days once accepted; the delay is the file — a legalised lease or attestation d'hébergement, an attestation de résidence from the local authority, a medical certificate under three months old, and a criminal-record extract from your country of origin. Rabat's prefectures are comparatively orderly, which helps only if you turn up complete.

The dirham is not freely convertible. Money in an ordinary resident dirham account can be spent in Morocco but not sent back out; a convertible-dirham or foreign-currency account, funded from currency imported from abroad with the exchange receipts kept, retains its right to leave. If you are paid by an international organisation, an embassy or a foreign employer — which describes a lot of Rabat — this is the decision that matters most, and it is effectively irreversible.

Rabat holds the ministries, the central administrations and almost every embassy in Morocco. A criminal-record extract to be legalised, a degree to be authenticated, a marriage to be transcribed, a consular appointment, a ministry stamp — all of it is a bus ride rather than a day trip and an overnight. People in Casablanca and Marrakech routinely come here for a single signature. If your move involves a lot of paperwork, and most do, this is the most underrated practical advantage Rabat has.

The Rabat-Salé tramway runs two lines linking Salé across the Bouregreg to central Rabat and out to Agdal, with extensions toward Hay Riad. It is clean, frequent and cheap, and it connects the ministries, both main stations, the universities and most of the districts a newcomer would consider. Rabat is one of very few Moroccan cities where a car is genuinely optional, but only if you choose an address with that in mind.

It is green, walkable, coastal, comparatively unhurried, and safe in a way that surprises people who only know Casablanca. It is also administrative rather than commercial: the private-sector job market is a fraction of Casablanca's, restaurants close earlier, and the social scene revolves around institutions — embassies, the UN agencies, the universities, the international schools. People who came for the calm love it; people who came for the career often end up commuting.