Places to Explore

• The Citadel and Sayyida Zaynab

  The view of the huge silver domes and needle-thin minarets of the Muhammad 'Ali Mosque against the stark backdrop of the desert cliffs of the Muquattam is one of Cairo's most striking visual icons. The... (more)

• Coptic Cairo (Mari Girgis)

  The area known as Mari Girgis (St. George) is centuries older than the Islamic city of Cairo. But even calling it Coptic Cairo isn't entirely accurate, because it includes an important synagogue and, nearby... (more)

• Downtown and Bulaq

  In the middle of the 19th century, the slavishly Francophile Khedive Isma'il laid out this district on a Parisian plan across the old canal from Islamic Cairo, which until then had been the heart of the... (more)

• The Fayyum

  The Fayyum is one of the largest and most fertile of all Egyptian oases, with an overall population of about 2 million people. Unlike the Western Desert oases, which are watered by artesian wells, the... (more)

• Giza

  It used to be that you approached Giza through green fields. Cairo's expansion means that now you have to run a gauntlet of raucously noisy city streets clogged with buses, vans, taxis, and the odd donkey... (more)

• Heliopolis

  In 1905, the Belgian industrialist Édouard Louis Joseph bought a swath of land northwest of Cairo. His plan was to build a new self-sustaining community in the desert with housing, shops, and recreation... (more)

• Islamic Cairo North

  If the Mamluks hadn't stopped the Mongols' furious advance at Ain Djalout (Palestine) in AD 1260, Cairo, like Baghdad and scores of other towns, might have been left in rubble. As it is, Misr al Mahrousa—a... (more)

• Islamic Cairo South

  Here is a teeming, commercial area, more typically Egyptian and less geared toward tourism than the Khan area. But if you feel like shopping, you can find all sorts of postmodern "1,001 Nights" gear here... (more)

• Side Trips from Cairo

  In order that the living could view the grandeur of the dead god-kings—and, in many cases, be buried alongside them—ancient Egyptians used the sites in the desert west of Memphis, one of the... (more)

• Wadi Natrun Monasteries

  One of the many Egyptian contributions to Christianity was the idea of going off into the wilderness to subject yourself to all manner of deprivation as a means of devoting yourself to God. Monastic life... (more)