The Mohammed VI Center for Dialogue of Civilizations was built between 2004 and 2007, funded jointly by the Kingdom of Morocco and the municipality of Coquimbo. The Moroccan architect Faissal Cherradi led the design, drawing the proportions directly from the Koutoubia. When it opened, the mayor of Coquimbo, Óscar Pereira, stood alongside Moroccan delegates to inaugurate it. The building is named for Mohammed VI, the reigning king of Morocco. It remains the only cultural center of Moroccan origin in all of Latin America, a single embassy of North African craft set down on a coastline that had never seen anything like it.

The complex covers 722 square meters and does far more than house prayer. Behind its walls are two prayer halls, a specialized library holding texts in Spanish, Arabic, and other languages that doubles as a conference room, and a museum. Roughly 25,000 visitors pass through each year, most of them not Muslim. That is precisely the point. The center was conceived as a place of encounter rather than worship alone, a working argument that cultures separated by oceans and faiths have more to say to each other than to fear. In a country where Islam is a small minority, the building functions as a quiet, generous classroom.

Coquimbo wears its monuments boldly. On a neighboring hill stands the Cruz del Tercer Milenio, a towering concrete cross built for the millennium, and the two structures regard each other across the city like envoys of different worlds. The minaret is visible from points along the coastline and from much of the port below, its geometric tilework catching the hard northern light. By 2019 the center had aged enough to need care, and a renovation funded by the municipality and the Moroccan embassy in Chile began to restore the detail that distance and salt air had begun to wear.