Where To Go in Cairo
27 places across 9 categories — the landmarks on the postcards, the observation decks, the museums, the parks, and the neighborhoods where the city actually lives.
Landmarks
TODO — what landmarks in Cairo are actually worth the time.
The Pyramids of Giza
The only surviving wonder of the ancient world, on a plateau at the edge of the suburbs, with a hard sell attached.
The Citadel of Saladin
Eight hundred years of fortification on a spur above the city, crowned by an Ottoman mosque that looks like it wandered in from Istanbul.
The Mosque of Ibn Tulun
The oldest mosque in Cairo surviving in its original form, from 879, with a spiral minaret and almost nobody in it.
Al-Azhar Mosque
Founded in 970, and the oldest continuously operating university in the world by most reckonings.
Sultan Hassan Mosque-Madrasa
A Mamluk mosque and law school of such scale that its own architect is said to have been executed so he could not repeat it.
Cairo Tower
A 187-metre concrete lotus on Gezira island, built with money the CIA is said to have intended as a personal bribe.
Museums
TODO — what museums in Cairo are actually worth the time.
The Grand Egyptian Museum
Two decades late, a kilometre from the pyramids, and holding the complete Tutankhamun collection for the first time.
The Egyptian Museum, Tahrir
The old pink museum on Tahrir Square, crowded, under-labelled, and still one of the great collections on earth.
National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation
The royal mummies in a darkened underground hall, and the only museum here that treats Egypt as continuous rather than ancient.
Museum of Islamic Art
One of the finest collections of Islamic art anywhere, rebuilt after a car bomb destroyed the front of it in 2014.
The Coptic Museum
The world's largest collection of Coptic Christian art, in a building with mashrabiya ceilings, inside a Roman fortress.
History
TODO — what history in Cairo are actually worth the time.
Al-Muizz Street
A kilometre of medieval Cairo with the densest concentration of Islamic architecture in the world, pedestrianised and lit at night.
Coptic Cairo
A walled compound inside a Roman fortress holding a church on stilts, a synagogue, and a crypt where the Holy Family is said to have sheltered.
The City of the Dead
A necropolis several kilometres long where Mamluk sultans are buried and living families have made homes among the tombs.
Parks & Outdoors
TODO — what parks & outdoors in Cairo are actually worth the time.
Food & Drink
TODO — what food & drink in Cairo are actually worth the time.
Abou Tarek Koshary
Four floors dedicated to one dish — Egypt's national plate of pasta, rice, lentils, chickpeas and fried onion.
El Fishawy Coffeehouse
A mirrored alley café in the bazaar, open more or less continuously since 1797, where Naguib Mahfouz wrote.
Downtown Cairo After Dark
Belle Époque arcades, hidden bars, jazz in a stairwell, and the best late-night eating in the city.
Culture & Music
TODO — what culture & music in Cairo are actually worth the time.
Shopping
TODO — what shopping in Cairo are actually worth the time.
Khan el-Khalili
A bazaar since 1382, half of it selling alabaster cats to visitors and half of it selling gold and spices to Cairo.
The Tentmakers' Street
The last covered market in Cairo, where men still hand-stitch appliqué panels in a trade that is genuinely dying.
Day Trips
TODO — what day trips in Cairo are actually worth the time.
Saqqara and Memphis
The oldest large stone building on earth, a necropolis older than Giza, and the flattened capital of Old Kingdom Egypt.
Alexandria
A Mediterranean city with a Roman theatre, a modern library on the site of the ancient one, and a completely different climate.
Neighbourhoods
TODO — what each part of Cairo is like to walk around, and who lives there.
Zamalek
The leafy half of an island in the Nile, full of embassies, galleries, jacaranda trees and the city's only quiet streets.
Downtown Cairo
Khedive Ismail's Paris on the Nile, built in twenty years, neglected for eighty, and slowly being taken seriously again.