Saint Mark’s Cathedral is the shorter name of Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral. This great Coptic church is located in the Cairo district of Abbassia. It’s construction began in 1965 when its foundation stone was led in presence of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. The construction was completed in 1968 and the church was consecrated in that same year, during the time of Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria, in an inauguration ceremony that was attended by Gamal Abdel-Nasser and the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. This cathedral was by far the biggest cathedral in Africa and the Middle East, until the inauguration of the new Nativity Cathedral in 2019, which is located in Egypt’s new Administrative Capital.

The land on which the church was built belonged to the Coptic Orthodox Church since 969, which is almost a thousand years before the Saint Mark’s Cathedral was built, when it was given to the Coptic Church by the Fatimid leader Jawhar, in compensation of taking a land from the church on which the palace of Al-Muizz le-deen-Allah was built. The land of the cathedral had lots of churches, before a lot of them were destroyed in the Middle Ages by extremists. An important church that was present, and still is, before the construction of the cathedral, is the Church of Anba Rouis.

The Cathedral of Saint Mark has the seat of the Coptic Orthodox Pope in Cairo. Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria has his office in this cathedral, which explains why the cathedral has strong security measures and presence.

The Cathedral of Saint Mark’s represents the rapid evolution of Coptic architecture in Egypt in the period of its construction. From the outside, the cathedral is composed of several arched walls that surround a big dome in the middle. The famous Egyptian civil engineer Dr. Michel Bakhoum contributed to the structural design of the cathedral.

The relics of Saint Mark were brought to the cathedral before its completion, when the Pope Paul VI returned part of the relic to Egypt, from which the relics were stolen in the year 828 to Venice, Italy. A relic of Athanasius I of Alexandria was also given by Pope Paul VI to Pope Shenouda III, who was the Pope of Alexandria and See of St. Mark at the time, and the relic was brought to the St. Mark Cathedral.