I was at one time interested in the Belle Époque in Cairo. And among the clippings I collected was an FT Weekend piece (October 10, 2015) on “nine of the world’s most impractical buildings” with Heba Saleh, your Cairo correspondent, contributing an account of the Mogamma. “For many Egyptians”, he writes, “a trip to the Mogamma is a realisation of one of their worst nightmares. The impersonal, totalitarian aspect of the 14-storey building is an apt metaphor for the cumbersome and dehumanising bureaucracy within it. Thousands of people enter its doors every day and shuffle in queues from counter to counter, to get passports, renew documents and carry out other necessary formalities. Before the 2011 revolution, there had been discussions about turning the building into a hotel, but such talk now appears to have died down.”
How delightful then to read in House & Home (February 22) that Downtown Cairo is undergoing some major redevelopment and that this building, the famous Mogamma, is in the process of being fitted out as an Autograph hotel, one of Marriott’s luxury range.
Alastair Conan
London CR5, UK
