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Rick's Café in Casablanca

© pa/Huber

The Legendary Rick’s Café, here Ingrid Bergman, playing Ilsa Lundt, and Humphrey Bogart, playing Richard “Rick” Blaine, fell in love, filming one of the best known romances of all time, Casablanca.

At Ricks Café Humphrey Bogart first uttered THE quotation in cinematic history: “here’s looking at you, kid.”
Casablanca the movie, by director Michael Curtiz, is a classic and Rick’s Café has become a cult.
In fact, the producers of the movie actually recreated the café interiors for the grand sum of US$9,200 in 1942 – it was based on an actual hotel, Hotel El Minzah in Tangiers. For sixty years Rick’s Café only ever existed on the silver screen and perhaps, in romantic fantasies. In 2004 former American diplomat, Kathy Kriger, had the Café rebuilt, down to the smallest detail as the film’s original. Today you will find two pianists in Rick’s Café and, yes, they play “As Time Goes By” just like Sam, the piano player in the movie.