holds one of the world’s finest collections of Islamic art. What’s on display is only a sliver of the 80,000 objects the museum owns, but the selected items are stunning like a shard of an Ayyubid bowl shows Mary holding a crucified Christ, medical tools, astrolabes, some breathtaking carpets, illuminated Qurans.

One of the finest examples of Mamluk architecture in the world, Sultan Hassan Mosque is a vision of Arabic artistry with an abundance of stalactite detailing and intricate arabesque features. It was built in 1356-63 for the Sultan Hassan el-Nasir. The exterior, with its large areas of stone, is reminiscent of an ancient Egyptian temple.

Directly facing the Sultan Hassan Mosque is, built in 1912 to house the tomb of Khedive Ismail and constructed to replicate its older next door neighbor. The ex-Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), is also buried here.

The second oldest mosque still standing in Cairo, Ibn Tulun Mosque, was built between AD 876 and 879 and modeled on the Kaaba in Mecca (Saudi Arabia). At the time it was built, it was the largest mosque in existence.

is a British major and army doctor who restored the two adjoining 16th-century houses between 1935 and 1942, filling them with lovely antiquities, artworks and knick-knacks acquired on his travels in the region. The house was used as a location in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me .On his death in 1945, Gayer-Anderson bequeathed the lot to Egypt. The house consists of two houses dating back to the Ottoman era in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD, and they were merged into one house.