Citadel and Al-Azhar

The next day we stayed in town and visited the Citadel and Al-Ahzar Park.

The Citadel is a walled in city/mosque in the middle of Cairo that served as the seat of power for many medieval Islamic rulers. Today it’s a walled in museum and mosque complex. We wandered into the Muhammad Ali Mosque first. (After shooing away some pesky, flirtatious men trying to sell us stuff) In order to go in we either had to take off our shoes or wear booties overtop of them. We entered the courtyard to begin with, it is massive and has a fairly garish pagoda in the middle which, I believe, was gift from the French. I really liked the latticed windows that dotted one wall of the courtyard.

My favorite part of the entire Citadel was the interior of the mosque. It was absolutely beautiful. Carpets overlapped all over the floor, which despite the massive interior, muted and hushed the sound of the people. Hanging down from the ceiling were lights in glass globes. Far above them was a gorgeously painted ceiling. The lights almost gave off the appearance of being stars, with the heavens high, high above them. It was incredibly beautiful and peaceful.

The rest of the Citadel wasn’t too interesting. I forget what day of the week it was, but whatever day is was none of the museums were open. We wandered into the prison part of one museum and one of the guards cleared away some debris that was blocking off the prison corridor. They had some roughly made dummies locked in the cells, but the guard was making me nervous because we were the only ones down this corridor and I was convinced he was going to shove us in one of the cells and do god knows what to us. Luckily he didn’t.

I thought we were going to end up like him!

Before we left, we got a really good view of the city from one of the viewing areas. 

Then we headed over to Al-Ahzar Park. It has a super interesting history. Years ago the spot where the park is, was a huge trash heap. Everyone threw their trash there and it eventually built up into a massive hill. Then someone got the bright idea to repurpose the trash heap. Over time they turned it into a beautiful park. There is a fee to enter, which goes to the upkeep. Inside there are green, grassy fields, playgrounds, a few ponds, trails to bike or walk on and a restaurant. We ate at a little café with beautiful views of the city, then went for a little bit of a wander. A park dude in a golf cart picked us up and gave us a tour of the park as well.