The Belle Époque downtown
Subscribe to discover the rest of Le Caire
You are seeing UGO picks, free everywhere. UGO+ unlocks every address in the city, plus its activities and events.
Weary Haussmann-style buildings, historic cafés, bookshops and small music venues: Wust el-Balad, downtown, is the modern Cairo of the 19th century. Visit the old Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square and have tea in cafés where writers and revolutionaries debated.
In the 1860s and 1870s, Khedive Ismail, an admirer of Haussmann’s Paris, laid out this new centre of squares and radiating avenues. The heart of Egyptian political life, Tahrir Square was the centre of the 2011 revolution.
