Tom's Travel Blog: Visiting the Abdeen Palace Museums

Thursday, February 2, 2023

Visiting the Abdeen Palace Museums

In all the years we've been visiting Egypt, we have never been to Abdeen Palace. While we've driven past it many times and were intrigued, we'd had never actually been inside this huge building less than a mile from the center of downtown, until this year.

We headed across the Qasr El-Nil bridge, through Tahrir Square, pausing for a brief look at the project to transform the old Soviet-era Mogamma building (Egypt's bureacracy central!) into a luxury hotel. The project appears to already be over budget but they have two years to finish it before it can be called late.

The Abdeen Palace looms large in the windshield as we approach.

Reportedly having five hundred rooms and occupying 25 acres of land, it made a pretty nice home for the ruling family of the kingdom prior to the 1952 revolution. Depending on the source you speak with, the very elegant upper floors, which were the living quarters of the king and family back in the day, are either closed to all except visiting diplomats, available for tour for $100 by reservation or on a regular tour bus route.

The ground floor, however, once the servants' quarters, is now a series of museums that are readily accessible via a ticket office just around the corner from everyone's favorite Hawawshi restaurant, El Rifai (on El-Shaikh Rihan Street).

We joined the ticket line at the palace where a modest number of tourists were paying their entrance fees. Notice that not only do foreigners pay a healthy premium for entrance, so do their cameras! Needless to say, I bought my camera a ticket.

There is something for everyone at the palace. A Hunting Hall, Arms Museum, Gun Museum, Medal and Decorations Museum, Presidential Gifts Museum and a Silver Museum.

Entries and exits throughout are large wooden doors marked with a very ornate letter "F." According to Wikipedia, King Fuad reportedly gave each of his six children names starting with the letter F after an Indian fortune-teller told him names starting with F would bring him good luck. (Yes, it does look like a P and not an F - but everyone swears it is an F)

The central courtyard shows a marked contrast to the concrete and stone that marks most of Cairo. A large Banyan tree, known locally as a Bengal Fig, stands near the entrance.

The first museum room encountered is the Hunting Hall, with a nice collection of rifles and shotguns, including these English .303 Enfields.

In the Hunting Hall we were greeted by an English-speaking docent who introduced us to the history of the palace, to the King Fouad/Farouk family and the other key players associated with the past couple of centuries of Egyptian history.

Linda studies the family tree, with particular emphasis on the King Fouad era.

Here is an English language version.

I didn't notice the "copper periscope" prominently displayed until after our docent had moved along. I thought the reason for its presence would become obvious later but still have not discovered one.

The Armaments Museum features typical displays of daggers, battle-axes, armor and the like.

The Gun Museum offers plenty of variety to the enthusiast who might not be familiar with the world-wide marketplace. King Farouk was the gun collector in the royal family.

This Union automatic pistol with a 35 round magazine is probably not legal to carry in California.

Entering the Decorations Museum, we find that Farouk collected a wide variety of items, and this sword is certainly one of the most decorous. Those are real gems in-bedded in the sheath.

Other interesting items in this room include pencil sketches from around 1916 by Prince Fouad during his education at an Italian military academy and a jewelry box with a deadly surprise inside.

Next up is the Museum of Decorations holding ribbons and medals from a large number of countries. Both the Vatican and the United States are represented. Note that the U.S. purple heart is labeled as "Medal of the carminic heart."

Moving on to the Presidential Gifts Museum, a rather recent addition to the palace museums, there is quite a variety of gifts from foreign nations. There are some significant Islamic mementos such as this representation of the Prophet Mohammed Mosque in Medina

and an interesting golden aircraft from China from 2015.

Egyptian children are likely to be most fascinated by the signed football jersey from Mohamed Salah, an Egyptian player known all over the world.

I was impressed by the gold plated Kalashnikov from Bahrain.

The Historical Documents Museum presents, among other items, the Imperial Ottoman firman, or decree, which established the rule of Muhammad Ali and his family.

Playing on a video screen during our visit was a short video showing the wedding of King Farouk's sister, Fawzia, to the Shah of Iran, in 1939. There has been much written about this arranged marriage and its unhappy outcome but it certainly seems to have been lavishly celebrated in Cairo at the time.