When the Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Constructing was printed in 2002, it nearly immediately entered the canon of contemporary Arab literature. Set on the flip of the century, the novel displays again on the demise of a privileged Egyptian lifestyle within the a long time after the 1952 revolution, by way of the intersecting tales of a number of protagonists: an ageing aristocratic playboy, a younger policeman, a closeted newspaper editor, a store woman.
However probably the most compelling protagonist is likely to be the one in its title, the place all of it performs out: the Yacoubian Constructing. In-built 1937, designed by an Italian architect, it sits on the intersection of Talaat Harb and Abd El Khalik Tharwat streets within the coronary heart of Downtown Cairo — a bricks-and-mortar semaphore for a golden period within the metropolis’s historical past.
Notably between the world wars, Cairo was the Arab world’s cosmopolitan capital, and Downtown its nexus of tradition and society. The fruit of an formidable Haussmann-inspired modernisation plan conceived by Egypt’s late Nineteenth-century ruler Khedive Isma’il Pasha, its avenues are lined with the Belle Époque buildings that earned Cairo its “Paris alongside the Nile” fame. Of their heyday they bustled with cafés, jazz bars and chic outlets at road stage, whereas within the flats above them worldly Egyptians and their expatriate counterparts hosted salons and performed enterprise.
However Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 army coup augured the start of that period’s finish. Downtown’s denizens started to trickle away, throughout the Nile to the leafy island enclave of Zamalek, or east to Heliopolis, or out into new suburbs; the fantastic outlets and cafés slowly adopted. New rent-reduction and management reforms (counterintuitively referred to as the Previous Rental Regulation) and the nationalisation of personal properties gutted landlording prospects — as not too long ago as final yr, there have been Downtown flats going for as little as E£10 (about 16p) a month — and full buildings had been transformed into outlets by their homeowners for the extra profitable business rents they commanded. Air pollution and neglect dulled and degraded the patrician facades.
Seven a long time later, and 14 years after a second revolution upended the nation, a handful of divergent forces are working to place Downtown Cairo’s star again within the ascendant. Which isn’t essentially an anticipated improvement. Whereas Larger Cairo’s present inhabitants of round 22mn is triple what it was in 1984, a lot of the newer actual property improvement is concentrated in and round New Cairo, Sheikh Zayed Metropolis and sixth of October, all areas alongside the outskirts of Cairo correct. Many are gated compounds, combining mixed-use improvement (malls, sports activities services) with low-rise condo blocks and villas. Downtown represents one thing totally completely different: environment, heritage buildings, artistic stimulations and the excitement — some may say the cacophony — of real city life, in one of many few neighbourhoods within the metropolis the place numerous socio-demographic teams work together each day.
And whereas the neighbourhood manifests sentimental worth for a lot of Egyptians, its improvement potential hasn’t been misplaced on the state. In an effort to generate overseas direct funding, the federal government of president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi entrusted a portfolio of state-owned Downtown monuments, together with the monolith Mogamma constructing on Tahrir Sq., to TSFE, a sovereign wealth fund arrange in 2018. The Mogamma is at present being developed into an Autograph lodge, one of many Marriott Assortment’s luxurious manufacturers, in a $200mn challenge.
Stroll alongside Downtown’s primary thoroughfares — Talaat Harb, Qasr El Nil, Sherif Basha, Mahmoud Bassiouny — and the indicators of renovation shine out from between gritty facades: new paint, polished glass in ornate French doorways, balconies reconstructed from archival pictures. The outdated French consulate has turn into a smooth four-storey co-working advanced. The long-lasting Cinema Radio, a as soon as nearly-defunct landmark, now homes an espresso bar, a superb Levantine bistro and an outpost of Diwan, Cairo’s female-founded booksellers. Its primary theatre has been partially restored and recurrently hosts occasions tied to the town’s burgeoning tradition calendar.
For some Egyptians of a sure technology, a putative Downtown renaissance isn’t straightforward to get one’s head round, a lot much less spend money on. “[Well-to-do] folks born within the Eighties dwell within the compounds and suburbs, and so they exit to eating places and bars and cafés there,” says Omniya Abdel Barr, an architect and the event director of the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Basis. However “these [developers] are engaged folks,” she continues. “They’re encouraging others to come back, spend and make investments, to personal and patronise companies right here.
“What Karim is doing is definitely bringing that type of site visitors again right here once more. It’s not simply the restorations, however the actions [he supports], the tenants, like Diwan, that he’s bringing in. And he has contributed to the cultural calendar, by serving to to make the venues it requires.”
Karim is Karim Shafei, chair of actual property funding fund Al Ismaelia. Based in 2008, at this time it owns 25 properties throughout Downtown: moreover the Cinema Radio advanced, these embody buildings housing high-spec serviced flats, boutique workplace areas, and studios and showrooms for artists and designers, a few of them partially subsidised. Within the small again streets behind Cinema Radio, amid metallic workshops and shisha bars, Al Ismaelia has renovated a second theatre, two hangar-like warehouses for occasions and exhibitions, and a row of small shopfronts amongst whose tenants are a vintage-clothing vendor and a younger textile designer.
Al Ismaelia’s backers embody Samih Sawiris, former chair of Goliath construction-development conglomerate Orascom (who counts properties in Andermatt, Lustica Bay in Montenegro, and El Gouna on Egypt’s Purple Sea Coast in his portfolio) and a handful of Saudi traders. (Latest funding co-operation with Saudi Arabia has seen billions movement into the nation, a lot of it directed into tourism and actual property.) Shafei says his fund’s mission is a revival of Downtown’s fortunes, making it a spot that displays a recent model of Egypt. He’ll fortunately have a good time the dusty however enduring attraction of its old-school addresses as a lot as the subsequent Cairene: on a protracted stroll by way of the neighbourhood, we duck into Estoril (opened 1962; the work on the partitions are on the market) and Le Grillon (a former beer backyard and well-known boîte for Fifties Egyptian cinema stars), and speculate in regards to the destiny of Groppi, the 100-year-old café-pâtisserie on Talaat Harb Sq..
However “what we do is just not about nostalgia; it’s not folkloric,” says Shafei, who was born and raised in Dokki, throughout the Nile, and for whom Downtown has exerted a near-mythical pull since he attended an arts pageant there in 2000. “We would like Downtown to be a spot the place all the town’s socio-economic segments can congregate, the place artists can afford to dwell and work.”
There have been obstacles alongside the route. For a couple of years within the wake of the 2011 revolution, Downtown was largely deserted by police, permitting road sellers to proliferate and create impassable site visitors conditions. Then got here Covid. All through, acquisitions typically concerned a number of tenants on minuscule business leases, which required diplomatically negotiating out of one after the other, an train that typically took years. “You may see a grand, fabulous constructing stuffed with grand flats, and solely two or three of them had been truly lived in,” says Abdel Barr.
“I believe we [Cairenes] often questioned, ‘How will it occur?’” she continues. “It has not been in any respect straightforward for them, juggling the forms and the various layers of possession . . . However by some means simply within the final, let’s say, three years, we’ve seen some issues actually coming to fruition. And it’s a wider imaginative and prescient than [many people] had realised.”
A part of the broader imaginative and prescient is significant contributions to Cairo’s cultural scene, which has additionally flourished previously few years. Artwork Cairo celebrated its sixth version two weeks in the past, drawing collectors from throughout Egypt and abroad. Different occasions, from Cairo Design Week to D-CAF (the Downtown Up to date Arts Pageant, now in its twelfth yr) and Artwork D’Égypte, all host exhibitions, panels and events Downtown.
“Cairo generally is rising at a price that’s unbelievable,” says Mai Eldib. The previous senior director for the Center East at Sotheby’s, now an unbiased artwork adviser, Eldib moved residence to Egypt from London final summer time. She lives on Zamalek, however is heartened to see Downtown on the upswing. “I’d love a extremely renewed, vibrant Downtown; I’d love to have the ability to sit at a café on the road right here.
“Till then I’ll take a rooftop,” she says with a smile. We’re at Mazeej Balad, a boutique lodge which opened final month on the highest two flooring of the Al Ismaelia-owned, 1896 La Viennoise constructing, two blocks from Tahrir Sq.. It has 5 art-filled suites and a rooftop restaurant, which is the place we’re consuming tea beneath scalloped umbrellas. A couple of ft away is a marble-lined bar with a retracting roof; lanterns dot the colorful tiled pavement between potted palms. Throughout the road, laundry hangs from a balcony; rooftops bristle with satellite tv for pc dishes.
Eldib reckons Downtown’s potential lies with these “who need an actual metropolis life. Somebody who has lived overseas for some time — an artist, a artistic. It’s low cost. It’s extremely genuine,” she says. “So I don’t see why you wouldn’t come.”
Mazeej Balad is managed by GnK Group, an Egyptian occasions firm. “We actually needed to be a part of bringing again Downtown,” says co-founder Kareem Nabil, who himself not too long ago closed on a flat not removed from the lodge. “This is without doubt one of the solely locations in Cairo with this density of nice structure. It’s actually the one one moreover Zamalek the place you possibly can stroll nearly anyplace you wish to go. And you’ll’t recreate this sense of historical past in New Cairo or sixth of October.”
Inevitably, some locals query whether or not “revival” is assuming the contours of gentrification; whether or not, nonetheless lofty the rhetoric — Al Ismaelia’s particularly — the fact dangers pricing out or erasing a few of what imbues the neighbourhood with its explicit attraction. “This is without doubt one of the most socially numerous elements of the complete metropolis,” says Tarek Shamma, an architect who practises right here and in Paris. He’s within the means of renovating a penthouse flat at 9 Advantage Basha, overlooking the Egyptian Museum — the identical constructing his workplace is in. I ask if he’s engaged on another initiatives regionally for purchasers. “No,” says the 42-year outdated, laughing. “My mates discover my alternative unique, and are going to family-friendly compounds out in sixth October or the [New Cairo] settlements.”
However not way back he was contacted by Coterie, an Alexandria-based developer that has not too long ago entered the Downtown Cairo market with two “adaptive-use” heritage properties. The extra intriguing is the 14-storey Ouzounian constructing, which can have eight flooring of studio flats, all with entry to concierge, health and wellness services, in addition to shops and versatile workspaces within the constructing’s decrease flooring.
“Downtown is without doubt one of the solely locations the place there can nonetheless be delicate pricing, as a result of rents are nonetheless so accessible,” Shamma notes. The E£100 — about £1.60 — I spend on a cappuccino on the Cinema Radio is, he factors out, an enormous quantity in a metropolis the place the common wage is round £300 a month.
One other native designer, commenting on the “Soho Home-circa-2010” really feel of Mazeej Balad, means that hewing to up to date design developments and hyper-patination imposes an aesthetic model of that very same drawback on the constructed surroundings. Shamma, whereas he praises Al Ismaelia’s and Coterie’s initiatives, doesn’t disagree: “Above road stage, most of those facades are fantastically rusticated; I’m unsure they want that hardcore layer of render, that super-new newness. I’m unsure they want way more than cleaning soap and water, truly.”
Full residency is just not required to purchase a house in Egypt, however there are limits on the variety of properties a overseas proprietor can purchase. Renovation prices are considerably decrease than within the UK and Europe (labour right here as throughout Egypt is affordable, and its artisanal restorers are, in the principle, extremely expert).
Discovering a fixer-upper isn’t straightforward for the punter. However there are methods to dip a toe into the residing expertise. Al Ismaelia’s Lemon Areas, serviced rental flats in a grand block on Adly Avenue, supply excessive ceilings, a number of house and haute-boilerplate design schemes (additionally they supply doormen and robust WiFi, a bedevilled subject throughout Cairo). Abdel Barr additionally notes a current proliferation of Downtown flats on Airbnb.
The Immobilia Flats are a extra rarefied proposition — 4 meticulously refurbished flats within the constructing of the identical identify, constructed in 1939 and infrequently cited as Cairo’s first luxurious high-rise; movie star Omar Sharif was amongst its many celebrated tenants. Starting from one to a few bedrooms, they’re stuffed with Egyptian and European antiques sourced from sellers in Cairo and Alexandria, with stunning cook dinner’s kitchens and landscaped terraces. There are employees to service them, and drivers out there.
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Elsewhere within the constructing, which instructions half a metropolis block, a big house is at present being remade as Immobilia Membership, the place residents can loosen up, entertain visitors and work. Three extra suites, smaller than the flats however nonetheless self-catering, will likely be situated off its entrance. At current, the charges are per evening with full service, beginning at $400; however longer stays may be negotiated.
Owned by Florian Amereller, a Cairo- and Florence-based lawyer who additionally owns the Lodge Al Moudira in Luxor, the Immobilia proposition casts issues resolutely within the late-day golden gentle of nostalgia. That’s upstairs within the flats, anyway; down within the constructing’s cavernous, Blade Runner-esque entrance, the place the fluorescent lights often flicker and a little bit gang of innocent however very vocal stray cats congregates, it’s unmistakably the Downtown of 2025.
However it’s exactly this intersection of grit and momentum that feels, to some, like a Second. Alice Daunt, founding father of London-based Daunt Journey, has been staying in an Immobilia flat recurrently since 2023, and is now contemplating shopping for within the constructing: “The tempo, the vitality and the creativity of Downtown remind me of that second a long time in the past when Marrakech sat on the cusp of change. It’s obtained the identical visceral pleasure about it, however on steroids.”
Maria Shollenbarger is journey editor of HTSI
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