Explore Cairo

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on Tahrir Square in central Cairo occupies a building by the French architect Marcel Dourgnon, opened in 1902. More than 100 halls on two floors show Pharaonic objects from the Predynastic period to Roman times; the royal mummies moved to the NMEC in 2021.

A 19th-century palace in central Cairo, built for Khedive Ismail and the official residence of Egypt's royal family from 1874 until 1952; it remains a presidential palace. Its lower floors house the Abdeen Palace Museums, with collections of arms, silverware, royal family items, presidential gifts and historical documents.

The Museum of Islamic Art occupies a neo-Mamluk building of 1903 at Bab al-Khalq in central Cairo. Its collection of more than 100,000 objects covers the Islamic world from Spain to India: carved woodwork, ceramics, metalwork, glass, textiles and Qur'an manuscripts. A bomb blast damaged the building in 2014, and the museum reopened in 2017.

Manial Palace is the former residence of Prince Mohamed Ali Tewfik on Roda Island in the Nile, built between 1899 and 1929. Its separate buildings, among them the residence, the throne hall, a mosque and a hunting museum, combine Ottoman, Moorish, Persian and Mamluk styles and stand in a walled garden of rare trees. It is now a museum.

Bab Zuwayla is the southern gate of Fatimid Cairo, built in 1092 by the vizier Badr al-Jamali and one of three surviving gates in the city walls. Its two round towers carry the minarets of the adjoining Mosque of Sultan al-Muayyad, added between 1415 and 1422. Visitors can climb inside the gate and up the minarets for views over the old city.

Built between 876 and 879 by Ahmad ibn Tulun, the Abbasid governor of Egypt, this is the oldest mosque in Egypt preserved largely in its original form. Arcades of pointed arches frame a vast courtyard with a domed fountain added in 1296, and the minaret has an external spiral stair. Visitors enter outside prayer times.

The Gayer-Anderson Museum occupies two connected houses of the 16th and 17th centuries beside the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. The British officer Robert Gayer-Anderson lived here from 1935 to 1942 and filled the rooms with his collection of furniture, carpets and objects from Egypt, the Islamic world and Asia. Visitors see the courtyards, mashrabiya screens and reception halls.

Al-Muizz Street is the main north–south street of the walled Fatimid city of Cairo, about one kilometre long from Bab al-Futuh to Bab Zuwayla and named after the caliph al-Muizz li-Din Allah. It is lined with Mamluk and Ottoman mosques, madrasas and houses, including the Qalawun complex in the Bayn al-Qasrayn section, and much of it is paved for pedestrians.

The Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan below the Citadel was built between 1356 and 1363 for the Mamluk sultan an-Nasir Hasan. Its massive stone walls enclose a courtyard with four vaulted iwans, each once used by one of the four Sunni schools of law, and a domed mausoleum. The Al-Rifa'i Mosque stands directly opposite.

A bazaar district in the historic centre of Cairo, named after a caravanserai built in the 1380s by the Mamluk emir Jaharkas al-Khalili. Its lanes and covered passages near the al-Hussein Mosque are lined with shops and workshops selling lamps, metalwork, textiles, spices and souvenirs, along with traditional coffeehouses.

Al-Azhar Mosque in historic Cairo was founded by the Fatimids in 970 and dedicated in 972 as the first mosque of their new capital. It became a centre of Sunni learning from which Al-Azhar University grew. Enlarged over a thousand years, it combines Fatimid arcades around a marble courtyard with Mamluk and Ottoman minarets and gates. Visitors enter outside prayer times.

The Al-Hussein Mosque stands beside the Khan el-Khalili bazaar and opposite Al-Azhar in historic Cairo. Its shrine, first built in 1154, is revered as the resting place of the head of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad; the present building in Gothic Revival style dates from 1874. It is a working mosque, entered outside prayer times.

The Al-Hakim Mosque stands at the northern end of Al-Muizz Street, beside the Bab al-Futuh gate of the Fatimid city wall. Begun by Caliph al-Aziz in 990 and completed by his son al-Hakim in 1013, it has a large marble courtyard and two minarets encased in square bastions. A 1980 restoration by the Dawoodi Bohras returned it to use as a working mosque.

A fortress on a spur of the Mokattam hills above central Cairo, begun by Saladin in 1176 and the seat of Egypt's rulers for some 700 years. Within its walls stand the Ottoman-style Mosque of Muhammad Ali, built from 1830, the 14th-century mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad and several museums.

The Amr ibn al-As Mosque in Old Cairo stands on the site of the first mosque in Egypt, founded around 642 by the Arab commander Amr ibn al-As in the new capital, Fustat. Rebuilt many times, it now has a large open courtyard ringed by long arcades of columns. It is a working mosque that visitors enter outside prayer times.

The Nilometer at the southern tip of Roda Island was built in 861 under the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil to measure the height of the Nile's annual flood. A marble column marked in cubits stands in a stone-lined well whose walls carry Kufic inscriptions, and a staircase spirals down to the bottom. A conical roof covers the well.

The Coptic Museum in Old Cairo was founded by Marcus Simaika in 1908 and holds the largest collection of Coptic Christian art. Its galleries show stone carvings, frescoes from monasteries, icons, textiles, woodwork and manuscripts, including the Nag Hammadi codices. Its façade copies that of the Fatimid Al-Aqmar Mosque, and it stands within the walls of the Babylon fortress.

The Ben Ezra Synagogue in Coptic Cairo stands on a site used for Jewish worship since at least the 9th century; the present building dates from its rebuilding in the 1890s. Its storeroom held the Cairo Geniza, some 400,000 manuscript fragments found in the 19th century and now mostly in Cambridge. It no longer holds regular services and is visited as a historic monument.

The Hanging Church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, is built over the southern gatehouse of the Roman fortress of Babylon in Coptic Cairo, which gives it its name. A church has stood here since early Christian times; the present building has a timber roof shaped like Noah's Ark, a marble pulpit on slender columns and more than 100 icons. Steps lead up from Mar Girgis Street.

Baron Empain Palace is a mansion in Heliopolis built in the early 20th century for the Belgian industrialist Édouard Empain, who founded the district. The French architect Alexandre Marcel based it on Hindu temple architecture, with a tiered tower and dense sculpted ornament. Restored by the state, it reopened in 2020 with an exhibition on the history of Heliopolis.