3 Best Shopping in Cairo, Egypt

Stop by Cairo's last remaining bookbinding company, in business since 1936, for beautiful, leather-bound and gilt-decorated diaries, sketchbooks, and photo albums. All the items here are hand-crafted using skills that are rare in the 21st century.

The Swiss expat who founded this store in the 1950s originally stocked it with used books he gathered from Europeans leaving Egypt. Subsequent owners have continued to maintain a good inventory of books in French and English as well as Arabic. It also sells prints, lithographs, and antique maps and postcards.

In the early 20th century, travel writers and photographers Rudolf Franz Lehnert and Ernst Heinrich Landrock explored North Africa, documenting scenes from Bedouin life, before making their way to and settling in Cairo, opening this bookshop in 1924. It's a wonderful place to browse: typewriters, cameras, telephones, and other vintage items are neatly organized within glass cases; the walls are hung with the duo's black-and-white photos; and the shelves are stocked with an international selection of books, many of them on Egypt's history.