Egypt Guide
Cairo
The Citadel
Opening time: Daily 8am–5pm; mosques closed Fri except for prayer; last entry to museums 30min before closing
Price: £E35, students £E20
The Citadel presents the most dramatic feature of Cairo's skyline: a centuries-old bastion crowned by the needle-like minarets of the great Mosque of Mohammed Ali. The entrance at Bab al-Gabal is on the opposite side of the Citadel from Midan Salah al-Din, but can be reached by minibus #154 from Abdel Mouneem Riyad terminal near Midan Tahrir, or by service-taxi microbuses from Ramses and Ataba along Sharia Salah Selim.
The whole fortified complex was begun by Salah al-Din, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty – known throughout Christendom as Saladin, the Crusaders' chivalrous foe. Salah al-Din's reign (1171–93) saw much fortification of the city, though it was his nephew, Al-Kamil, who developed the Citadel as a royal residence, later to be replaced by the palaces of Sultan al-Nasir.
The main features of the Citadel as it is today, however, are associated with Mohammed Ali, a worthy successor to the Mamlukes and Turks. In 1811 he feasted 470 leading Mamlukes in the Citadel palace, bade them farewell with honours, then had them ambushed in the sloping lane behind the Bab al-Azab, the locked gate (now closed to the public) opposite the Akhur Mosque. An oil painting in the Manial Palace on Roda Island depicts the apocryphal tale of a Mamluke who escaped by leaping the walls on his horse; in reality he survived by not attending the feast.
On entering the Citadel, you keep the wall to your right and follow it round into the southern courtyard of the southern enclosure, most of whose buildings are currently closed for restoration, among them the former Mint. A passage from the courtyard's north side leads through to the central courtyard; to the left of this passage, stairs lead up to the back of the Citadel's most dominant structure, the Mosque of Mohammed Ali.