Cairo, Egypt’s capital, is the biggest
city in Africa and the Middle East and one of the biggest in the world. It is a
city with a great number of sights and monuments, that if one wishes to see
everything that Cairo has to offer, it might take several weeks to finish the
city’s sheer amount of interesting spots.
Cairo, or Al-Qahirah (which means “The
Vanquisher”, in Arabic) was built by the Fatimid leader Jawhar Al Siqilli by
order of Caliph Al Moez Le'Deen Allah on the site of the old Roman city of
Babylon, near the ruins of ancient Memphis, and has been the capital of Egypt
since its construction one thousand years ago. Since that time, Cairo has been
expanded considerably until it has become the largest capital in Africa &
the Arab world with a population of about 20 million.
Today, Cairo includes a very diverse
and large number of places and spots that attest to the different eras that the
city has seen and that have shaped it into the Cairo that exists now. These
places include locations and monuments that adhere, mainly, to the Pharaonic,
Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic cultures.
No
matter how many times you visit Cairo, and how chaotic, noisy and unpredictable
it may seem to some, Cairo’s soul beautifully encompasses the sense of
familiarity and tolerance of its own people and embodies the diversity of all
the different people that have came to settle in it throughout its history,
making a visit to it a rather life-defining experience.