Cairo, Egypt Cairo is a sprawling metropolis where pharaonic grandeur meets Islamic splendor and modern chaos. Just outside its borders rise the Pyramids of Giza—the last surviving wonder of the ancient world—standing for 4,500 years against desert skies. Within the city, medieval Cairo dazzles with mosques, madrasas, and caravanserais from the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk eras, including the Citadel and Al-Azhar Mosque (founded in 970 CE). The Egyptian Museum (soon succeeded by the Grand Egyptian Museum) holds Tutankhamun’s treasures and mummified kings. Coptic Cairo preserves early Christian churches carved into Roman fortress walls. Despite pollution, traffic, and population pressure (over 20 million in Greater Cairo), the city pulses with energy—street vendors sell ful medames at dawn, call to prayer echoes over rooftops, and Nile feluccas glide past skyscrapers. Cairo is not polished—it’s visceral, overwhelming, and alive. To walk Khan el-Khalili bazaar is to step into a thousand-year-old marketplace where history isn’t displayed but traded, argued, and lived. It’s a city that defies neat narratives, offering instead raw, unfiltered continuity from antiquity to the Arab Spring and beyond.
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