Landmarks
TODO — what landmarks in Cairo are actually worth the time.
6 placesThe 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.