Cairo is the largest city in Africa and the Arab world — around ten million in the governorate and something over twenty-two million in the metropolitan area, which makes it one of the largest urban regions on earth.
It sits at the point where the Nile valley opens into the Delta, on both banks, with the Western Desert beginning immediately behind Giza and the Eastern Desert behind the Mokattam hills.
The layers
Cairo was founded five times, each capital just north of the last, and none was ever fully demolished. See A Thousand Years of Capitals.
Running south to north on the east bank: Roman Babylon and Coptic Cairo; Fustat, the first Islamic capital of 641; al-Qata’i of 868, of which only Ibn Tulun’s mosque survives; al-Qahira, the Fatimid city of 969, which is Islamic Cairo; and Downtown, laid out in the 1860s as a European city.
The districts
Downtown (Wust el-Balad) — the nineteenth-century grid, all three metro lines, Tahrir Square.
Islamic Cairo — the medieval city around al-Muizz Street, Khan el-Khalili and al-Azhar, with the Citadel above it.
Coptic Cairo and Fustat — the oldest inhabited ground, on Metro Line 1.
Zamalek and Gezira — the island, leafy and quiet, with the Opera House and the Tower.
Garden City — curving streets and Nile hotels south of Downtown.
Giza — across the river, running west to the pyramids on the desert edge.
Maadi and Heliopolis — planned suburbs, one south and one north-east.
6th of October and New Cairo — desert satellite cities, and further east the New Administrative Capital, under construction since 2015, to which government has been relocating.
The Nile
Two branches around Gezira and Roda islands, crossed by a series of bridges that jam at rush hour. The Corniche runs along both banks.
Everything green in Cairo is within a kilometre of the river. Beyond that the city is the colour of the desert it is built on.
Scale and traffic
The single most important practical fact is that Cairo is very large and the roads cannot cope. Journeys are unpredictable and the metro, where it goes, is much faster than a car.
Language
Arabic, in the Egyptian dialect — which, because of Egypt’s film and music industry, is the variety most widely understood across the Arab world.
English is common in tourism, hotels and among educated Cairenes, less so on the street. A few words go a long way: salaam alaykum, shukran (thank you), la shukran (no thank you), min fadlak (please), khalas (enough).
Numbers are worth learning to read — Egyptian Arabic uses Eastern Arabic numerals on some price tags and taxi meters.