Cairo

Cairo

Cairo is the capital of Egypt and its governance. It is the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the Egyptians often called simply the name of the country, delivered in Arabic and Egyptian dialect cult Misr Masr.Its metropolitan area includes a population of 24,285,000 inhabitants, making Cairo in the thirteenth most populous city. It is also the most populous metropolitan area across the African continent. It is known to Egyptians as the "mother of all cities" and the "city of a thousand minarets."Founded in the year 116 a. C., in what is known today as Old Cairo, when the Romans rebuilt an old Persian fortress along the Nile before its founding, Memphis and other cities were the capital of the pharaohs. The current name is due to the Fatimids, who named the city with the name, Al-Qahira. After several invasions like the Mamluks, Ottomans, Napoleon and the British, Cairo became sovereign capital in 1952.

 

 Culture
 
The new opera house in Cairo.It has numerous universities, theaters, monuments and museums: the most important is the Egyptian Museum, located in Tahrir Square and houses the world's largest collection of objects from Ancient Egypt. Currently is considering moving to a larger building, erected in the Giza area.

The epicenter of cultural life in Cairo is located in the National Cultural Center, a complex of cultural buildings devoted to theater, dance, opera and music, located on the island of Gezira. In the center stands the Cairo Opera House, inaugurated in 1988 by President Hosni Mubarak and hosted a concert by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in January 2007 in his first appearance in the Middle East and Africa. Classical music is usually predominant in the city's Opera House, although it is easy to enjoy classical Arabic, although it has more widely in the Arabic Music Institute, located in Ramsis Street. A must for music in the city is the Arabic Music Festival, held in early November at the Cairo Opera House. In this cultural complex are six theaters and auditoriums. The current Opera Opera Khedivial replaced, or also known as the Royal Opera House, a building that was built in 1869 and remained active until 1971.Cairo




 Egyptian Museum
 The Egyptian Museum of Cairo, contains the largest collection in the world on ancient Egypt, with more than 120,000 objects.His story begins in 1798, due to the expectation that arose in Europe the issue of Napoleon in the nineteenth century the European consuls agents, such as Belzoni Drovetti or out of the country searched and all sorts of relics, until in 1835 he created the Egyptian Antiquities Service to protect the monuments and treasures of the plunder. All the pieces found were deposited first in a building and then Azbaia Citadel of Saladin. Unfortunately, this first collection was given to Duke Maximilian of Austria for Abbas Pasha.In 1858 he opened a new museum in Boulaq, part of whose collection was lost in a flood of the Nile in 1878 saved the objects moved to the Palace of Ismail Pasha in Giza.In 1897 the French architect Marcel Dourgnon began to build the current headquarters, located in Tahrir Square. The museum was inaugurated on November 15, 1902, and experienced tremendous growth since 1922, with the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter.Is currently building the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, a 50-hectare cultural complex that contains more than 150 thousand pieces. When it opens, it is expected that the current Tahir Square remains a cultural center. The Egyptian government also has plans to open another museum in the area of ​​Al-Fustat, the Museum of Egyptian Civilization, with 50,000 pieces from the different cultures that have happened in Egypt: Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Christian and Muslim.

 Tourism

The Pyramids of Giza.

Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hassan.The city of Cairo was more than nine million tourists in 2006. Several of the main attractions cluster in the so-called historic center a World Heritage Site by Unesco. However, there are other fundamental points of tourism Cairo that are not located in the historic center.Obviously, the claim of the city and country are the Pyramids of Giza, located about twenty kilometers southwest of the capital. The Great Pyramid of Cheops is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one which is still standing. His mission was to host the sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Khufu and is estimated for its construction were used about 2.5 million blocks of limestone. Somewhat further away from neighboring queens pyramids are the great pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure.The south gate of Bab Zuwayla, located in Islamic Cairo is the last bit that remains of the Fatimid city of Al-Qahira. Originally, the Mamluks made public their performances here mortal, but from the nineteenth century the site was chosen by the holy Mitwalli to perform miracles. Today, the population and tourists stuck into the door lock of hair or a piece of their clothing in order to see the fulfillment of their prayers. Also in Islamic Cairo is al-Qasryn Bayn, which was the main public square in the city in the Middle Ages. It erected several palaces Mamluks, highlighting the Qalawun Mausoleum and Madrasa, which dates back to 1279.