Zamalek

A look around

What you’ll be living next to. Swipe through.

1/4

Where it sits

The circle is Zamalek and roughly a 10-minute walk around it.

How far is everything?

From the middle of this area to the city's headline sights — pick your own on the city page and these become your list.

• The Egyptian Museum (Tahrir)24 min walk2.0 km
• Al-Muizz Street & the mosques13 min taxi4.2 km
• Khan el-Khalili bazaar13 min taxi4.3 km
• The Citadel & Mosque of Muhammad Ali16 min taxi5.3 km
• Coptic Cairo & the Hanging Church19 min taxi6.2 km
• The Grand Egyptian Museum37 min taxi12.2 km
• The Pyramids of Giza & the Sphinx37 min taxi12.3 km
• A camel ride at the pyramids38 min taxi12.7 km

On your doorstep

What you’re living next to if you stay here.

• 5.A felucca on the Nile — Escape the din with the timeless pleasure of a felucca — a traditional lateen-sailed boat gliding silently up the Nile at sunset, the city softening on the banks, a captain and the breeze your only company. Cheap, romantic and wonderfully calming; hire one for an hour from the Zamalek or Garden City banks as the sun goes down.
• 10.The Cairo Tower — The 187-metre lattice tower on Zamalek's Gezira island — ride up for a 360° view over the sprawling megacity, the Nile snaking through it, and the pyramids on the desert horizon on a clear day. The best way to grasp the sheer scale of Cairo; go late afternoon into sunset, when the light softens the haze.
• 12.A Nile dinner cruise — A glitzy Cairo night out — dinner aboard a floating restaurant gliding along the illuminated Nile, usually with a whirling tanoura dancer and a belly-dance show. Touristy and kitsch but genuinely fun, and a relaxed way to see the city lights from the water; a fine contrast to the felucca's quiet charm.
• 15.Mint tea & shisha at an ahwa — Cairo's social life happens in the ahwa (traditional coffeehouse) — sit out late over a sweet mint tea or a thick Turkish coffee and a bubbling shisha (water-pipe), watching the endless street theatre and, perhaps, a backgammon game. The most relaxed, authentic Cairo evening; the old cafés of downtown and the Khan are the classics.