The Palaces of Cairo’s Belle Époque

Many visitors to Cairo, driving from the airport to the city on Sal Slim Road, would notice a strange stupa-like structure, standing in the middle of a large empty plot on the left of the road in Mir al-adda (Heliopolis).This is the Palace of Baron Empain (1852-1929), built in 1907 for this rich, eccentric investor, who was in the process of planning a whole new suburb north of Cairo for an exclusively foreign community.His palace is but one of the city's many notable turn-of-the-century palaces spread all over town and into the suburbs, which, despite their run-down state today, still reflect unmistakable majesty and opulence.Together with other splendid but equally neglected architectural gems from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they constitute the visual remnants of an extraordinary chapter in the life of the Egyptian capital, an era that has been evocativelyand somewhat arrogantlycalled "la Belle poque" in literature about modern Egypt. 1 The Belle poque architecture of Cairo is concentrated in what is known today as Wasa al-Balad (Middle of the City or Downtown), and its surrounding early 20thcentury residential extensions, such as ilmiyya, bdn, Garden City, Blq, ubra, and Zamlik on the island of al-Gazra, in addition to the uniquely gracious suburbs of Heliopolis, a few kilometres to the north, and Mad, another few kilometres to the south.These neighbourhoods burst with outstanding structures that cover a panoply of architectural styles from the Neo-Moorish, Neo-Classical, and Neo-Baroque palaces and mansions of the late 19th century, to Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Neo-Mamluk villas and apartment buildings of the early 20th century, to the rarer modernist villas of the 1940s and 1950s, in addition to a smattering of Rococo, Italian Renaissance, and Neo-Pharaonic religious and commercial buildings. 2 Until recently, the Belle poque architecture received little attention in a country where time is measured by millennia, not centuries, and where historical architecture dates back at least to 3000 BC.In fact, only a few hasty studies dealt with it before the infit or the economic opening and shift away from socialism, initiated by President Anwar as-Sdt (r.1970-1981) in the 1970s.Since then, the interest in thenow nostalgically rememberedarchitectural vestiges predating the 1952 revolution

Art · Architecture and Cultural Influences · Historical and Architectural Studies · Islamic Studies and History

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