Photo : Summering2018 — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Cairo · Manial, Roda Island
Prince Mohamed Ali Palace
Buildings, borrowed styles, a garden of rare trees — on an island in the middle of Cairo.
Prince Mohamed Ali Tewfik, son of Khedive Tewfik and brother of Abbas Hilmi II, had this compound built on Roda Island between 1900 and 1929, and deliberately filled it with everything he liked: an Ottoman reception hall, a throne room, a private mosque lined with tilework, an Andalusian clock tower. Each room quotes another city — Damascus, Granada, Isfahan, Istanbul — with ivory inlay and painted ceilings, which makes it a catalogue rather than a home. The hunting museum, added to the grounds in 1963, shows the collections of King Farouk, of the prince himself and of Prince Yusuf Kamal: hundreds of heads and horns in rows, to be read as a document of its time rather than as a collection. The botanical garden, planted with species brought from far away, is half the visit.
The extra bit
Follow the island's corniche south to the tip: the Nilometer and the Manasterly Palace make a second visit there, out on the water, that almost no tour offers.
Know before you go
Come by taxi and ask to be dropped at the entrance itself, not at the end of the street: Manial is a dense district with poor transport. Ticket, bags checked, and sometimes a supplement to take photographs, as in any state museum. One of the buildings may be closed for restoration with nothing at the gate to say so.
