Cairo, Egypt’s sprawling capital, sits on the Nile River. In the heart of the city are Tahrir Square and the great Egyptian Museum, a treasure trove of antiquities, including royal mummies and gilded artifacts of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Nearby Giza is home to the famous pyramids and the Great Sphinx, which dates back to the 26th century BC. In the leafy Zamalek district on Gezira Island, the 187-meter Cairo TV Tower offers a panoramic view of the city.
With its estimated population of around nine and a half million, it is Egypt’s largest city. The Greater Cairo metropolitan region, which also includes the neighboring city of el-Gīza on the west bank of the Nile and the city of Shubrā el-Cheima north of Cairo, has a population of about 21 million and is the largest in Africa and the thirteenth largest in the world.
Cairo is a young city by Egyptian standards, it has no direct predecessor from pharaonic times. To the south of the present city was the imperial capital of the Old Kingdom, Memphis and its associated necropolis. To the northeast was the capital of the thirteenth Lower Egyptian gau, Heliopolis. In today’s Matariya district, the obelisk to the temple of Sesostris I and several tombs bear witness to that period. The nearby quarries (Gebel el-Ahmar, Muqattam) were exploited for their quartzite.
Cairo, actually today’s Islamic Old City, gets its name under the Fatimids: el-Qāhira (Arabic: القاهرة, “the conqueror, the conquered”; the often-mentioned translation “the victorious” does not quite capture the actual meaning).
Cairo restaurants offer both Egyptian and international dishes. Meat dishes (beef, lamb and chicken) tend to be expensive by Egyptian standards and are only offered in more upscale restaurants.
The choice of restaurants in Cairo is wide. There are a thousand restaurants, cafes and bars of all kinds here in terms of size.