The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Egypt is famous for its Islamic & Coptic historical sites; from mosques dating back hundreds of years to churches like Ain Shams’ Hanging Church, Egypt is home to some of the world’s most religiously diverse historical sites. Given all the treasures that Egypt has to offer, we were disheartened to see the country suffer from a plummeting number of tourists: in the year 2016 Egypt saw only 5.4 million tourists, after the annual average had been 14.7 million tourists in the preceding years.  

In 2018, however, things have been seemingly turning around for the better, with the Egyptian Museum reporting 3,000 foreigners visiting the Museum on Sham El-Nessim, while only 1,200 locals visited the Museum on the same day. We had also previously reported on the Thomas Cook Holiday Report 2018, which emphasised the large increase in the number of British holiday-makers making their way to Egypt this year. Moreover, according to data published by STR Global, “hotels in Egypt reported the highest first-quarter occupancy rates since 2010, rising from a 21.2% occupancy rate to reach 60.1% this year”

As such, a new addition to the tourism-boosting movement is always welcome and quite needed in Egypt. After many endeavours to retain the beauty of Downtown Cairo, an action plan is now being put to effect that focuses on Islamic archaeological sites around Egypt.

As a first step, Dr. Gamal Mustafa, President of Islamic & Coptic Archaeology Sector, has made his first of many field visits to a number of Islamic archaeological sites in Cairo and Giza. His visits included El-Moez St. and El-Gamaleya Area.

Dr. Gamal has elaborated that after the visits were concluded, the Sector conducted a meeting to start setting the goals and finalising the action plan. He added that the operations will commence according to the specified time schedule, and assured there will be efforts to provide the financial needs required to complete the project.