Eight hundred years of fortification on a spur above the city, crowned by an Ottoman mosque that looks like it wandered in from Istanbul.
Saladin began the Citadel in 1176, on a spur of the Mokattam hills, to defend Cairo against the Crusaders and — equally — to hold the city itself. It remained the seat of government in Egypt for nearly seven hundred years, until Khedive Ismail moved to Abdeen Palace in the 1870s.
Almost every ruler added something, so the site is a stack of periods rather than one building.
The Mosque of Muhammad Ali
The dominant structure and the one on every postcard, built between 1830 and 1848 in a deliberately Ottoman style — two slender pencil minarets and a cascade of domes, modelled on the great mosques of Istanbul rather than on anything Egyptian.
That choice was political. Muhammad Ali was an Albanian officer who took power in 1805 and made Egypt effectively independent while remaining nominally Ottoman, and a mosque in the imperial style on the highest point in Cairo said something specific.
It is faced in alabaster, which has weathered badly, and the interior is vast, hung with lamps, and rather cold. The clock in the courtyard was a gift from Louis Philippe of France in exchange for the obelisk now in the Place de la Concorde. It has never worked properly.
The massacre
In 1811 Muhammad Ali invited around 500 Mamluk leaders to a ceremony at the Citadel, and had them shot in a narrow passage as they left. It ended Mamluk power in Egypt after five and a half centuries. The passage is pointed out on tours.
The rest of the site
The Mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad of 1318 is the surviving Mamluk mosque, plainer and considerably older than Muhammad Ali’s, with two minarets in green faience.
The Military Museum in the Harim Palace, the Police Museum, the Carriage Museum and the Well of Joseph — a 90-metre shaft cut through the rock by Saladin’s engineers to reach the water table.
The view
From the western terrace the whole city spreads out: the minarets of the Islamic quarter immediately below, the Sultan Hassan and Rifa’i mosques directly beneath the walls, Downtown beyond, and on a clear day the pyramids on the horizon.
Cairo’s air quality means “clear day” is doing some work in that sentence. Winter mornings after rain are the best chance.
Practicalities
One ticket covers the whole site including the museums. Allow three hours; it is large and the walking is on uneven ground in full sun.
Modest dress for the mosques, shoes off, headscarf for women. There is no metro nearby — take a taxi or an Uber.
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 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.