Cairo: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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The pyramids are not out in the desert: the city has grown to within a few hundred metres of the plateau, and the last building on Pyramids Road is about ten minutes’ walk from the Sphinx. Everything here was built in roughly eighty years, around 2560 BC, by a state that had just worked out how to organise a hundred thousand people and feed them. And since 2025 the objects that came out of these tombs are a kilometre away, in the Grand Egyptian Museum. Start at eight — by eleven the heat and the crowds make it a different experience. A full day, and the plateau has no shade.

A short history of Cairo

In 641 the Arab commander Amr ibn al-As founded Fustat, next to the Roman fortress of Babylon, and it was the first city on the site. In 969 the Fatimids founded al-Qahira, 'the Victorious', beside it, and a year later began building the Al-Azhar Mosque, home to one of the oldest universities in the world. In 1176 Saladin built the Citadel. Maimonides lived and worked as a physician in Fustat, and in its Ben Ezra Synagogue the Cairo Genizah was found, hundreds of thousands of pages from the Middle Ages. In 1517 the city passed to the Ottomans, and in 1798 Napoleon entered it. Today it is the largest city in the Arab world.

The ten best sights in Cairo

1
Great Pyramid of Khufu
From 700 pounds, going inside is a separate ticket, and go at eight
2
Pyramid of Khafre
Included in the plateau ticket, and the casing at its top is original
3
Pyramid of Menkaure
The smallest of the three, and the granite courses at its base were never finished
4
Great Sphinx
In the plateau ticket, 73 metres long, and carved from one outcrop
5
Grand Egyptian Museum
From 1,200 pounds, booked online, and allow a full day
6
Egyptian Museum
From 550 pounds, on Tahrir, and it is the old 1902 building
7
Museum of Islamic Art
From 200 pounds, one of the best such collections anywhere, and nearly empty
8
Coptic Museum
From 200 pounds, carved wood and textiles, and the courtyard is shaded
9
Gayer-Anderson Museum
From 150 pounds, two 16th-century houses joined together, and beside Ibn Tulun
10
Beit El-Suhaymi
From 100 pounds, a 1648 merchant house with its mashrabiya intact

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Three pyramids and a museum that took twenty years

Great Pyramid of Khufu · Originally a hundred and forty-six and a half metres tall, now about a hundred and thirty-nine, because the smooth white casing stones were stripped off in the Middle Ages and used to build Cairo — you can see them in the walls of the mosques in the old city. It was the tallest structure on earth for about three thousand eight hundred years, until Lincoln Cathedral’s spire, and it is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing.
Pyramid of Khafre · It looks taller than Khufu’s and it is not: it is about three metres shorter and stands on ground that is ten metres higher. The top third still carries its original casing, which is the only place on the plateau where you can see what all three looked like when they were finished — smooth, white and reflective, with no steps at all.
Pyramid of Menkaure · A quarter of the volume of the Great Pyramid, and the bottom sixteen courses are granite brought by barge from Aswan, nine hundred kilometres upriver. They were never dressed smooth: the blocks are still rough on the outside, which means the king died before the work finished and nobody completed it for him.
Great Sphinx · Seventy-three metres long and twenty high, carved out of a single ridge of limestone that was left standing when the surrounding rock was quarried for the pyramids — so the quarry and the sculpture are the same act. Between its paws stands a granite stele placed by Thutmose the Fourth around 1400 BC, recording that he dreamt the Sphinx asked him to clear the sand off it, and that he did.
Grand Egyptian Museum · Twenty years in construction and five thousand square metres of gallery for Tutankhamun alone — all five thousand three hundred and ninety-eight objects from the tomb shown together, which had never been done before because the old museum had no room. At the entrance stands the eleven-metre colossus of Ramesses the Second, which spent half a century standing in a traffic square in central Cairo and was moved here in 2006 on a custom-built vehicle at five kilometres an hour.
Egyptian Museum · The 1902 building on Tahrir, and it is worth seeing precisely because it is the old way of doing it: dense cases, handwritten labels, objects on top of objects, about a hundred and twenty thousand items in a building designed for a fraction of that. Much has moved to the new museums, and what is left is the nineteenth-century idea of a museum, still working.

A thousand years of Islamic Cairo

Cairo was founded in 969 as a walled royal city called al-Qahira, and for six hundred years after that it was the largest city in the world outside China. The result is a square kilometre with the densest concentration of medieval Islamic architecture anywhere on earth — a mosque from 879 with a spiral minaret, a street of palaces and schools you can walk end to end, and a market that began as a caravanserai in 1382. Three hours. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes come off in the mosques, and Friday midday everything stops for prayers.

Mosque of Ibn Tulun · Finished in 879 and it is the oldest mosque in Cairo that survives in its original form, which is unusual — almost everything else was rebuilt. The minaret has an external spiral ramp copied from Samarra in Iraq, and the courtyard is twenty-six thousand square metres of nothing: no furniture, no decoration except a band of carved sycamore, and an acoustic that carries a voice across the whole space.
Gayer-Anderson Museum · Two houses from 1540 and 1632, joined together by a British army doctor who lived in them in the 1930s and filled them with what he collected. Because he was a resident and not a curator, the rooms are furnished as rooms — the harem room with its mashrabiya screen, the reception hall with a fountain in the floor — and that makes it the best place in Cairo to understand how these houses were actually used.
Sultan Hassan Mosque · Begun in 1356 and one of the largest mosques ever built by floor area. Two things went wrong: a minaret collapsed during construction and killed about three hundred people, and the sultan himself was murdered at twenty-six before it was finished and was never buried in the tomb chamber he had built. The entrance passage bends twice in the dark before it opens into the courtyard, and that is deliberate.
Citadel of Saladin · Saladin began it in 1176 on a limestone spur, and Egypt was governed from this hill for almost seven hundred years. The big Ottoman-style mosque in it was built by Muhammad Ali in 1848; the clock in its courtyard was a gift from Louis Philippe of France in exchange for the Luxor obelisk that now stands in the Place de la Concorde, and the clock has never worked.
Al-Muizz Street · The main north-south axis of the original walled city, laid out in 969, and along one kilometre of it stand mosques, schools, hospitals, fountains and merchant houses from every century between the tenth and the nineteenth. Unesco calls it the densest concentration of Islamic architectural heritage in the world. It is closed to cars after six in the evening, and that is when to walk it.
Khan el-Khalili · Founded in 1382 as a caravanserai — a walled courtyard where caravans unloaded, stored goods on the ground floor and slept above — and the original gates and a few of the courtyards survive inside the modern market. The rule for buying is the same as it was: the first price is roughly three times the last, and walking away is part of the conversation, not an insult.

The Nile, the Copts and the twentieth century

Before the Arab conquest this was a Roman frontier fort called Babylon, and inside its walls is a quarter of churches and one synagogue that have been in use for about fifteen hundred years. Downriver the city turns European: a downtown laid out in the 1860s in imitation of Paris, a tower Nasser built with money he was given to stay quiet, and a park built on top of a rubbish mound that had been accumulating since the fifteenth century. Three hours, and the Coptic quarter shuts to visitors during Sunday services.

Babylon Fortress · Two round Roman towers from about the year 300, built where the Nile then ran — the river has since moved about four hundred metres west, which is why the towers now stand inland and why their bases are below the current street level. The entire Coptic quarter sits inside the walls of this fort, which is the oldest structure in Cairo.
Hanging Church · It is called hanging because it is: the church was built on top of the Roman water gate, with its nave suspended across the gap between the two towers, and there is a glass panel in the floor through which you can see the drop. It has been rebuilt many times since the seventh century, and the twenty-nine marble columns inside were taken from older Roman buildings — every one is different.
Ben Ezra Synagogue · In a storeroom above this building, sealed for about eight hundred years, scholars found in the 1890s roughly four hundred thousand manuscript fragments — the Cairo Geniza. Jewish law forbids destroying any text containing the name of God, so the community had thrown everything in there: contracts, letters, shopping lists, children’s exercises. It is the single richest source on daily life in the medieval Mediterranean.
Talaat Harb Square · The downtown around this square was laid out from the 1860s on by Khedive Ismail, who had seen Haussmann’s Paris and hired French and Italian architects to build the same thing here before the Suez Canal opening. The result is wrought-iron balconies, mansard roofs and circular squares — and almost all of it is still standing, shabby and occupied, which is rare.
Cairo Tower · A hundred and eighty-seven metres of concrete lattice on Gezira island, finished in 1961, and the story Egyptians tell about it is that the money came from the United States as a personal payment to Nasser, and that he spent it on a tower overlooking the American embassy instead. The design is a lotus stalk. It was the tallest structure in Africa for ten years.
Al-Azhar Park · Thirty hectares of garden built on a mound of rubble and rubbish that had been dumped here for about five hundred years and stood up to forty-five metres deep. The Aga Khan paid for it, the excavation removed a million cubic metres of debris, and buried inside the mound they found a one-and-a-half kilometre stretch of the twelfth-century Ayyubid city wall, which was restored and is now the park’s eastern edge.

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Getting to Cairo and getting around

Cairo International Airport · 22 kilometres north-east, and the taxi should be agreed before you get in
Ramses station · Trains to Alexandria and Luxor, and the metro runs underneath it
Giza station · The metro stop for the pyramid road, and still 11 kilometres from the plateau

Cheap eats in Cairo

The national dish is koshary, and it is street food by design: rice, lentils, macaroni, chickpeas, fried onions and tomato sauce in one bowl, with chilli and vinegar-garlic on the side. It is vegan by accident, costs about forty pounds, and the proportions are fought over. The other two things to eat standing are ful medames — broad beans cooked overnight — and taameya, which is Egyptian falafel made from split broad beans rather than chickpeas, and is greener inside. A full bowl anywhere is thirty to sixty pounds, and the places that matter are cash only.

Koshary Abou Tarek · About 60 pounds for a large bowl, cash, and open till midnight
Felfela · About 100 pounds for two, and it is two minutes from Tahrir
El Fishawy · Mint tea is about 50 pounds, shisha 80, and it never closes
Zooba · About 150 pounds, Egyptian street food done cleanly, and it has branches now
Abou El Sid · About 500 pounds a head, molokhia and stuffed pigeon, and book at the weekend
Cafe Riche · A coffee is about 60 pounds, and it closes at eleven
Groppi · From 1925, a Swiss patisserie that served the whole monarchy, and now faded
Khan el-Khalili lanes · Juice, taameya and sugarcane from hatches, 20 to 40 pounds, and open late

Museums in Cairo

Cairo holds the largest collection of pharaonic material anywhere, and since 2025 it is split across three places: the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza for the pyramid-age and Tutankhamun, the old Tahrir museum for everything that has not moved, and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation for the royal mummies. Beyond those, two collections almost nobody visits are world class — the Museum of Islamic Art and the Mahmoud Khalil villa.

Grand Egyptian Museum · From 1,200 pounds, booked online, and a full day
Egyptian Museum · From 550 pounds, the 1902 building, and it is worth it for the density
Museum of Islamic Art · From 200 pounds, closed Friday midday, and two hours
Coptic Museum · From 200 pounds, carved wood and textiles, and the ceilings are the exhibit too
Mahmoud Khalil Museum · From 100 pounds, no phones inside, and closed Monday
Gayer-Anderson Museum · From 150 pounds, two joined 16th-century houses, and the roof terrace is open
Beit El-Suhaymi · From 100 pounds, on Al-Muizz Street, and open till five
Egyptian Textile Museum · From 80 pounds, on Al-Muizz Street, linen from the pharaohs onward

Nature and day trips near Cairo

Cairo has very little green and the reason is water: the city is in a desert and everything planted has to be irrigated from the Nile. What exists outside the city is better — two hours south-west is the Fayoum depression, which has a lake saltier than the sea, two man-made lakes with the only waterfall in Egypt, and a valley full of whale skeletons from when all of this was ocean floor.

Wadi Al Hitan · From 200 pounds, a 4x4 for the last stretch, and go in winter
Wadi El Rayan · From 100 pounds, 130 kilometres out, and a full day
Lake Qarun · 100 kilometres out, saltier than the sea, and flamingos winter on it
Tunis village · 100 kilometres out, the workshops are open, and prices are low
Al-Azhar Park · From 50 pounds, 30 hectares on a former rubbish mound, and the best city view
Gezira Island · Free, the island in the Nile, and the sporting club gardens fill it
Cairo Corniche · Free, and a felucca for an hour is about 300 pounds, agreed in advance
Maadi · Free, a garden suburb laid out in 1904, and the only shaded streets in Cairo

Things to do in Cairo with kids

Grand Egyptian Museum · From 1,200 pounds, a children’s museum inside, and air conditioned throughout
Great Pyramid · Camels and horses are everywhere — agree the price and the time before mounting
Cairo Tower · From 300 pounds, 187 metres, and the lift queue is shortest at ten in the morning
Al-Azhar Park · From 50 pounds, lawns and a lake, and real shade by five
Felucca on the Nile · About 300 pounds an hour for the boat, not per person, and agree it first
Sakiet El Sawy · From 50 pounds, children’s theatre on Friday mornings, and under a bridge
Step Pyramid of Djoser · From 450 pounds, open sand to run on, and far less crowded than Giza
Khan el-Khalili · Open late, busy and loud, and hold hands in the narrow lanes

Holy places in Cairo

Egypt is about ninety per cent Muslim and roughly ten per cent Christian, almost all of them Coptic Orthodox — a church that has been here since the first century and that split from the rest of Christianity in 451 over a question of Christ’s nature. Cairo also had one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, and one synagogue is still standing in the Coptic quarter. Dress modestly everywhere, shoes come off in mosques, and Friday midday is prayer time.

Mosque of Ibn Tulun · Free, from 879, and you can climb the spiral minaret for the view
Al-Azhar Mosque · Free, outside prayer times, and the courtyard is the part to see
Sultan Hassan Mosque · From 180 pounds with Al-Rifai, and it is one of the largest ever built
Al-Rifai Mosque · From 180 pounds, opposite Sultan Hassan, and shoes off
Hanging Church · Free, suspended over a Roman gate, and closed to visitors during services
Abu Serga Church · Free, and the crypt is often shut because of flooding
Ben Ezra Synagogue · Free, no photographs, and the Geniza storeroom is the reason it is famous
Sayyida Zeinab Mosque · Free, Muslims only inside, and the moulid festival fills the quarter

Nightlife in Cairo

Cairo stays awake, but not in the way a European capital does: alcohol is legal and sold in licensed places, yet the night out is mostly cafés, shisha, food and the Nile. Nothing starts before ten and the city is fullest at one in the morning — partly because the heat makes the evening the usable part of the day. Ramadan inverts everything: the whole city eats at sunset and the streets are busiest at two.

El Fishawy · Open all night, mirrors and marble, and someone will try to sell you something
Al-Muizz Street at night · Free, closed to cars and lit after six, and families walk it till midnight
Al-Ghouri Wekala · Free or near it, two evenings a week, and arrive 40 minutes early
Cairo Opera House · From 100 pounds, a jacket is expected, and the season is October to June
Sakiet El Sawy · From 50 pounds, independent music most nights, and no alcohol
Darb 1718 · A contemporary art space in the potters’ quarter, and check what is on first
Zamalek · The licensed bars and the walkable streets, and it runs till two
Cairo Corniche · Free, and at one in the morning the whole embankment is full of families

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Frequently asked questions about Cairo

What is there to see in Cairo?

The top sights in Cairo are Great Pyramid of Khufu, Pyramid of Khafre and Pyramid of Menkaure. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Cairo?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Cairo without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Cairo?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Cairo, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Three pyramids and a museum that took twenty years.

How do you get to Cairo and get around?

The main ways are Cairo International Airport, Ramses station and Giza station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Cairo, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Cairo that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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