back March 1912, the Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Hafid signed the protectorate treaty with France. Two
months later, Hubert Lyautey arrived in Casablanca to become the first general resident of France in Morocco. He
will remain in this function for twelve years, a sufficient to the shape the colonisation and transform the
country in depth.
His equestrian statue has been envisaged upon his death in 1934, and was inaugurated in 1938 in the center of the
Place de la Victoire also called the Administrative Square, the current Place Mohammed V. As for the former royal
places, the ordering of the Place de la Victoire brings the axes and the monuments into harmony. The monumental
facades and the axes of the square converged on the equestrian statue of Marshal Lyautey. In one night of 1959,
after Morocco officially gained independence on 2 March 1956, and due to a lot of pressure from certain Moroccan
political and trade union groups, the government will move the sculpture to the gardens of the future Consulate
General of France, moving it from public to private space.
With this project I want to give a good sense of the location and what happened in this time, during and after the
colonial era, and also highlight the fact that this is not only a story about a statue but also a story about
space.
