A 187-metre concrete lotus on Gezira island, built with money the CIA is said to have intended as a personal bribe.
Completed in 1961 and, at 187 metres, the tallest structure in Egypt until 1998 and taller than the Great Pyramid by forty metres. The concrete lattice is designed as a stylised lotus, the pharaonic plant, and it is one of the better pieces of Nasser-era architecture.
The funding story
The tower’s origin is one of the best stories in Cairo, and while the details are disputed the outline is widely accepted.
In the 1950s the CIA is said to have given Nasser a large sum — often quoted as $3 million — intended as a personal inducement to align with the United States. Nasser, rather than pocketing it or refusing it publicly, is said to have spent it on a tower overlooking the American embassy, as a visible and permanent gesture.
Egyptians have long referred to it by a nickname best translated as Nasser’s monument to Roosevelt, which captures the tone.
Take it as an excellent story with a plausible core.
The view
Better than any other viewpoint in Cairo, and the reason to come. The Nile runs directly below with its bridges and feluccas, Zamalek immediately around you, Downtown and Tahrir to the east, the Citadel and the mosques of Islamic Cairo beyond, and on a good day the pyramids on the western horizon.
Cairo’s air is frequently hazy, and the pyramids are visible on perhaps a third of days. Winter mornings after rain are the best chance.
Practicalities
There is one lift, and it is the constraint. Queues of thirty minutes each way are normal at sunset and worse at weekends.
Tickets are bought at the base. There is a revolving restaurant and a café at the top, both mediocre and both requiring a minimum spend that some visitors find is enforced and others do not.
Photography is permitted. Note that photographing military installations, bridges under guard and government buildings is a genuine sensitivity in Egypt — from a tower you will see all of them, and nobody minds general views, but pointing a long lens at a specific installation is unwise.
Around it
The Cairo Opera House and the grounds of the Gezira Exhibition complex are at the foot of the tower. Zamalek, the northern half of the island, is a ten-minute walk and the pleasantest district in the city.
More Landmarks
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.