Cairo, Egypt

March, 2024

Downtown Cairo. This area modelled on 1860s Paris is filled with elegant but crumbling buildings constructed over the next seven decades. Many were nationalised in the 1950s and 1960s then fell into disrepair. It is a fading beauty, but efforts have recently been made to restore the elegance of some of these buildings. My first reaction to this city centre area was surprise, I had not expected the area to look so much like Europe. That said, there was still something uniquely Egyptian about the place, in the little details, in the touches and the finishings; with the Arabic signage and the pharaonic symbols and motifs everywhere. Including the hieroglyphs inside the elevators at my hotel that reminded me constantly that I was actually nowhere else but in Egypt. It was fascinating.

There are few trees in Cairo, but there are lots of palm trees of various types, used ornamentally to line major boulevards and avenues.

Although downtown Cairo was planned by European architects, throughout the city is a mix of different architectural styles. I was taken aback by how European the downtown area looked. Cairo is nicknamed The Paris along the Nile.

Influenced by French architecture, Downtown Cairo was first built by Khedive Ismail in 1863, who was determined to turn Cairo, a largely medieval city, into the “Paris of the East”.

I had seen it with my eyes before reading up on it and then understood why the downtown is the way it is. The beauty of this downtown area is fading now, but it must have been splendid at some time in the past. It still is beautiful though, but there is something uniquely Egyptian about it. And not just the downtown.

Despite the conflicting styles and influences, those dated European style buildings, as with the modern buildings, have subtle Egyptian touches and finishes such as hieroglyphs, pharaonic symbols and motifs, ancient Egyptian imagery and other ornate detailing, everywhere you look, this including the hieroglyphs inside the elevators at my hotel; small details that constantly remind you of where you are. And I haven't mentioned the even older traditional North African and Arabian architectural styles.

I found the mix of ancient, modern, and everything in-between, very interesting. I would have loved to have stayed a bit longer to roam around more.

Overall it made me think that in sub Saharan Africa, and in Nigeria in particular, we have abandoned our traditional building styles, such that there is little in modern architecture that can be termed as a uniquely Nigerian style. Our traditional building styles techniques and practices, except perhaps for Hausa traditional architecture to a limited extent, have been largely abandoned and relegated to the past. What I saw in Egypt was the opposite. The Egyptians have brought their traditional styles into the 21st century, taking advantage of new technologies to advance that unique style of theirs. This made for a cultural richness and depth in their architecture that we might have had in Nigeria too, but don't have today in our buildings.— in Cairo, Egypt.