| Summary: | This article is about touristic visits to Bousbir, Casablanca’s red-light district during the French colonial period. Bousbir was a kind of erotic-exotic theme park, visited by both the local population and travelers. It was an essential stop on any visit to Casablanca, and hence to Morocco. The Bousbir touristic experience had elements, all at once, of colonial travel, excursions to red-light districts, slumming, and visits to the great works of the French Empire. The appeal of Bousbir was in making available – at the same time morally scandalous and politically admirable – the indigenous female body in an oriental setting. The history of Bousbir invites us to question the connections between tourism and prostitution, and more specifically between (neo)colonial tourism and sex tourism.
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