A plan for Cairo

Cairo is on the Nile, and has ancient origins in the vicinity of the Pharaonic city of Memphis. The city started to take its present form in 641 CE, when the Arab general Amr Ibn Al-Ase conquered Egypt for Islam and founded a new capital called Misr Al-Fustat, "the City of the Tents". The legend is that Al-Ase, on the day he was leaving to conquer Alexandria, found two doves nesting in his tent. Not wanting to disturb them, he left the tent. Upon returning victorious, he called his soldiers to pitch their tents around his, and this became the site of the new city in what is now Old Cairo. The name may have been a pun – Misr/Masr is the Arabic word for city, but it is also the Arabic name of the entire country of Egypt. The Tunisian Fatimid dynasty captured the city in 969 CE and founded a new city, Al-Qahira ("The Victorious") just north of Al-Fustat. Al-Qahira gave the city its English name, Cairo, but the locals still call it MàSr (مصر), which is also the Arabic name of the entire country of Egypt (similar to Mexico City in Mexico).

Climate

See also: Egypt#Climate

The best time to visit Cairo is during the winter from November to March, when daytime highs mostly stay below 26°C (79°F), with night time lows around 10°C (50°F) with occasional rain showers clearing the air, but still, you do not need an umbrella, even the rainiest months of the year rarely top 10 mm (0.4 in).

If visiting during winter, be aware that not all buildings are equipped with heaters, including some hotels and hostels. Visitors should always pack a few warm jumpers (sweaters) and a warm jacket for evening wear. In Cairo, in indoor buildings without air-conditioning, temperatures are about 15°C (59°F) in the coldest winter days and about 34°C (93°F) in the hottest summer days.

The brief spring from March to May can be pleasant as long as there are no sand storms, but summer temperatures, on the other hand, can reach a searing 38°C (100°F). In September and October, the period of late summer and early autumn, farmers burn rice husks to ash after sunset near Greater Cairo and this makes the air smokey.

Cairo is a vast metropolitan cityscape. It includes an array of modern skyscrapers, mosques, bazaars and ruins of associated ancient monuments outside the city.

Cairo has an overwhelming array of attractions, listed under their individual districts along with transport and other practicalities. Some highlights:

Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. The oldest and only surviving monuments of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it is the country's most famous tourist attraction. See it now before the hordes return.

1 Grand Egyptian Museum (المتحف المصري الكبير al-Matḥaf al-Miṣriyy al-Kabīr), El Remayah Square, Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, Giza (2 km northwest of the Pyramids), ☏ +20 235317344, tourism_info@easwaaqmisr.com. 09:00-18:00, Wed and Sat 09–21. The Grand Egyptian Museum is the primary replacement for the venerable Egyptian Museum in Midan Tahrir, with much bigger exhibition, storage and workplace areas. Not to be confused with the Egyptian Museum or the Museum of Egyptian Civilisation. The main galleries cover Egyptian history from prehistory to the Greco-Roman period. The highlight is the Tutenkhamun gallery. At least four hours are needed to see the whole museum at a comfortable pace. LE1490. (updated Apr 2026)

2 Egyptian Museum (250 m north of Tahrir square), ☏ +20 2 25796948. Much of its collections were moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum in 2022. Adult 550 LE, student: 275 LE; photography (personal use) free; video 300 LE. (updated Oct 2025)

Coffee and shisha

Have a coffee, mint tea or Cola at El Fishawy's coffee shop in Khan El-Khalili. Smoke a shisha water pipe (try the "double apple" flavor) and watch the world go by. Great cheap entertainment.

Felucca

Ride a felucca along the Nile River. A great way to relax and enjoy a night under the stars in Cairo. Feluccas are available across from the Four Seasons Hotel in Garden City. Pay after your ride, or you may get much less than you bargained for. Public boats with loud noisy music and a giggling crowd are also available for 1/2 hour, but are very uncomfortable.

Parks

Cairo has a shortage of parks, but a few of them exist.

The most famous is the Giza Zoo, which is in front of the Four Seasons Hotel in Giza. This is one of the oldest zoos in the world, opened in 1891.

Hadiqat Al Orman (English: Al Orman Gardens), Giza. This is a fairly large park near the Giza Zoo. It can be entered by paying a daily ticket at the gate. It contains a variety of trees and flowers and is a nice place to escape the noise and traffic of the city. However, it may be very crowded with locals, especially on weekends and public holidays like Eid.

Hadiqat Al Azbakiya (English: Al Azbakieya Gardens). Another nice park to enjoy the greenery and scenery of trees and gardens, while remaining inside the city. It is located in the Azbakiya area of Cairo, and the best option is to take a taxi.

Genenet El Asmak (English: Garden of the Fish), Zamalek. A nice park, which also includes several large caves containing water aquariums, where you can see different species of fish and underwater life through glass windows. Like other parks, a very cheap ticket enables you to enter and enjoy the day there.

Merryland (Arabic: Genenet El Merryland), in Heliopolis district near Roxy Cinema. Again, another park with trees and gardens and nice scenery, and there are restaurants and cafes in the park.

El Hadiqa El Dawliya (English: the International Garden), in Nasr City district. It was opened when Nasr City district was built in the 1960s. Sections of the park contain copies of famous buildings from around the world (i.e. the Eiffel Tower of Paris, Great Wall of China, the windmills of Holland). The copies are much smaller of course, similar to small statues. Interesting to see.

Individual listings can be found in Cairo's district articles

Cairo has an enormous number of restaurants, catering to most needs. Ironically though, one may want to avoid any restaurants listed in popular guidebooks. Egyptian restaurants have a habit of after being listed, cooking up a special English menu with vastly inflated prices. That said, cheap food can be found everywhere in street restaurants and snack stalls. The top notch restaurants are often, but not always, found in hotels and Nile boats. The borders between restaurants and cafes are not crystal-clear in the Egyptian capital. In many places it is perfectly acceptable to just have a drink or sheesha. Medium and high-range outlets might have a minimum charge. Cheaper restaurants will normally not serve alcohol as well as some more expensive outlets.

In general, downtown is good for budget eating, while for higher quality eating you should head to Zamalek, Mohandiseen or any of the other more affluent parts of town.

Egyptian and Middle Eastern food

Traditional Egyptian staples are available almost everywhere. In stalls and street restaurants you will find traditional dishes like fūl (bean paste), falāfel, moussaka, koshari (rice, macaroni, lentils, chick peas and tomato sauce), feTīr (pancakes with different fillings) and shawarma (an import from Lebanon and Syria — pieces of roasted meat usually wrapped in bread). Cheaper places will only serve up vegetables and maybe beef hot dogs or corned beef. Eggs, fried potatoes and salads are also usually available. Hygiene varies wildly and the best advice is to go for the most visited places. Avoid empty restaurants as the food will be less fresh. Especially downtown, you can find many good koshari shops, including many outlets of the excellent Koshari Tahrir chain. Delicious and cheap fūl, falāfel, and shawarma sandwiches can be bought at the many outlets of popular Gad fast food chain dotted around Cairo.

Individual listings can be found in Cairo's district articles

Cairo has a wide range of drinking options from the very traditional to fashionable and modern. At the other end of the scale, almost any street in Cairo has a traditional coffee house, ´ahwa, a traditionally male institution of social life tracing many hundreds of years back in history. Besides that you'll find everything from fruit stalls to patisseriés and bakeries and modern cafés whipping up all varieties of modern European coffee. In addition to the traditional Turkish coffee and shai tea, virtually everywhere you'll find drinks like hibiscus tea kerkedeeh, served warm or cold depending on season, sahleb, a milk-based drink usually served in winter, fakhfakhenna (a kind of fruit salad), sugarcane juice, mango and tamarind juice, Tamr hindi.

Traditional coffee houses

Cairo remains one of the best cities in the world to sample the traditional coffee house culture of the region. They are called maqhâ in Standard Arabic, but in the local dialect this is turned into ´ahwa. The Turkish coffee remains an invariable ingredient in any Cairene coffee house, and water pipe (sheesha) and tea is even more popular. While considered "old fashioned" for a time, these places are again turning fashionable among younger crowds and even smoking a water-pipe is no longer a male-only pastime. Places vary from just a small affair—plastic chairs and tables put out on the street—to more elaborate cafes especially in upscale and tourist areas.

You will find that it's useful to have several maps handy if you are looking to get around Cairo on your own. Spellings of street and place names can vary from map to map and from map to actual location, and not every street will appear on every map.

By metro

Cairo is home to Africa's first and largest metro system. While modern and sleek, the three lines are all too limited in scope. As of October 2024, a single trip ticket ranges from LE8-20, depending on the number of stations covered:

LE8: up to 9 stations (yellow ticket)

LE10: 10-16 stations (green ticket)

LE15: 17-22 stations (purple ticket)

LE 20: more than 23 stations (beige ticket)

It is a crowded subway, but no more than Tokyo, Paris or London. If you are used to the metro in big cities and/or can deal with the crowding (be extra careful to avoid pickpocketing), it is the best way of avoiding traffic jams while travelling.

The key interchanges are Shohadaa (Martyrs) (formerly Mubarak) at Midan Ramses, Sadat at Midan Tahrir, and Attaba (Ataba; عتبة).

You'll need to be assertive (but not stroppy) when trying to buy tickets - Egyptians don't queue. First get your small change ready in a quiet area, so you're not fumbling with wallet and big notes and dropping your passport amidst the crowd. Then steadily press through the crowd to the ticket window, as they are doing. If you intend to make a return or future trip, buy multiple tickets, so you only have to scrummage once. There are ticket vending machines available, though sometimes they're low on change.

The Cairo Metro has stations in Dokki and Maadi, among other places. To reach the Giza Pyramids, take the metro to Giza town then pick up a bus or taxi for "Al-Haram". You can also reach Heliopolis (Masr el-Gedida) using line 3, at the stations: Al Ahram (Korba) and Koleyet El Banat (Merghani). The extension of this line to the airport was due in 2020 but still isn't finished yet. As of June 2025, line 3 has one branch ending in Adly Mansour. The station to the airport is still under construction.

Scams against tourists are almost a national sport, though they're usually obvious. A good rule of thumb is that if someone approaches you on the street, they're trying to scam you. Don't talk to them. Common scams are:

The place you're going to is closed, why don't you take my tour? (Taxi drivers may use this. You can avoid this by using Uber or Careem.)

You need help crossing the street? Come, let me help you!

Let me show you my shop, it's just on this corner. No this corner, no this corner, etc.

Let me show you how to get to the mosque - no baksheesh, just LE100 to get in and go up to the roof. (Your new friend then tips the mosque guardian LE20 and pockets the rest.)

During politically-calm times, you can walk around the main streets anytime you feel like roaming. It is fairly safe and you will always find lots of people around smiling and offering to help. Women alone can expect to be the target of an excessive amount of catcalling, but it rarely goes beyond that. Around the more touristy locations there is an abundance of 'helpful' people, but be careful who you go with and under no circumstance let anyone push or guide you anywhere that you do not want to go! If you get lost look for the security and police officers. Many speak some English, and most know their local area very well as well as the tourist spots.

Crossing streets is another major challenge in Cairo. Traffic lights, which only exist in a few locations, are routinely disregarded. In downtown Cairo, police officers may be controlling traffic at key intersections at busy times. Crossing the street is like playing the video game "Frogger", hurrying across the street one lane at a time, when there is a small break in traffic. One way to cross a street that proved to be effective is to place yourself next to an Egyptian who wants to cross the street and follow.