CAIRO: Once upon a time, in a kingdom not so far away, Mohamed Ali used to throw beautiful and glamorous events in a palace on the Nile in Shubra. After years of desolation, on Monday evening, the doors of this palace were once again thrown open, the magical space was flooded with opera music and peopled with the most elegant of guests.
President Hosni Mubarak reopened the Mohamed Ali Palace on Monday. The renovation, which took five years and cost LE 50 million, aimed to reconstruct it just as it was originally.
Mohamed Ali Pasha, Egypt’s ruler at the time, gave the orders to begin construction of the palace in 1808. Its design was novel to Egypt as it was copied from Turkish palaces, with the Nile instead of the Bosporus as its backdrop.
Since the 1952 revolution, the palace had been used by various ministries and was in desperate need for renovation. Parts of it were destroyed to build the Agricultural Road to Alexandria, while some parts had collapsed out of neglect.
Part of the gardens, donated by King Fuad to the Ain Shams Faculty of Agriculture as a research facility in 1935, now houses a chicken project and a youth hostel.
The only building that survived was the public or entertainment pavilion, called El-Faskiya or water fountain, built in 1821 by the famous French architect Pascal-Xavier Coste (1787-1879) who lived in Egypt for ten years.
The Faskiya, which is a rectangular building surrounded by gardens, has a central courtyard, which is open to the sky. In the courtyard is a large pool, or as most people refer to it “the lake. In the middle of the lake is a marbled island connected by bridges to the gardens.
As Nelly Naga remembers it, “I was there as a young girl, when Princess Shevikar, King Fuad’s first wife,was hosting her annual charity ball. It was splendid, as we would arrive in a boat to the middle island … I used to be part of a tableau vivant (a living re-creation popular at the time), along with many young unmarried teenagers, dressed in Ottoman outfits, creating an Ottoman theme.
On Monday, from that same island, the Cairo Opera Orchestra, led by conductor Nada Abassi and soloist Amira Ahmed, entertained the president, the country’s dignitaries and foreign ambassadors in the royal room.
Although the weather was quite cold, the guests seemed content in the open-air palace. They enjoyed the night, regardless of the weather,and fell under the spell of the palace’s charm.
The rectangular palace has four major rooms, one at each corner.The magnificent detailing on the walls, floors and even the ceilings reflect the style of the Ottoman Empire during its finest years and were designed by Egyptian, Italian and other European artists. One of the rooms has all the names of the royal family at the time, imprinted into a beautiful design on the ceiling.The renewed colors of the designs retain an authentic feel in spite of being repainted.
“Not much has changed in the house since the ’50s. Although for a large period the house was a disgraceful mess, it now looks and feels just as it did pre-revolution, says Hussein Youssef, who was once a regular guest at the palace.
Though the palace may have suffered many years of neglect, the glamour that once surrounded it has been restored once again to its original function as an events hall where foreign dignitaries will be “wined, dined and entertained.
