Cairo Marriott Hotel & Omar Khayyam Casino | |
---|---|
General information | |
Location | Cairo, Egypt |
Opening | 1982 |
Owner | Legacy Hotels [1] |
Management | Legacy Hotels |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 19 |
Other information | |
Number of rooms | 1,087 |
Website | |
www.cairomarriotthotel.com |
The Cairo Marriott Hotel is a large hotel located in the Zamalek district of Gezira Island in Egypt and is just west of Downtown Cairo. It is one of the tallest buildings in Cairo. The Marriott opened in 1982, but its central wing was built as the Gezirah Palace for the Khedive Isma'il Pasha in 1869 and converted to a luxury hotel in 1894.
The hotel consists of 1,087 rooms, making it one of the largest hotels in the Middle East. The rooms are located in two identical twenty-story buildings—the Gezira and Zamelek Towers. Situated between them on ground level is the palace and main entrance to the hotel, which—after reconstruction—now contains the reception and administration areas. On the roof of the palace is an open-air theatre which faces the Nile and central Cairo. The hotel is also used for meetings and events; it has 19 meeting rooms and event venues that total more than 28,000 sq ft of space.
The Gezirah Palace was commissioned by Khedive Ismail and designed by Carl von Diebitsch to host French Emperor Napoleon III and his wife Empress Eugénie during the celebration of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. [2] Ismail asked the architect to make it resemble the Palace of Versailles. [2] In 1880, the palace was seized by Ismail's creditors. It was eventually leased to the Compagnie Internationale des Grands Hotels, who opened it as The Ghezireh Palace Hotel in October 1894. [3] During World War I, the hotel served as the No.2 Australian General Hospital, after the Mena House was unable to cope with the huge number of casualties from the Battle of Gallipoli. In 1919, The Ghezireh Palace Hotel was sold to Syrian businessman Habib Lotfallah and converted back to a private residence. [4] The palace was nationalized by Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1952 [5] and eventually converted back to a hotel, reopening in 1962 as the Omar Khayyam Hotel. [5] In the late 1970s, the two large towers were added and the entire hotel was completely rebuilt. [5] President Hosni Mubarak presided over the grand reopening in 1982 [6] as the Cairo Marriott Hotel. [7] In 20 December 2023, Icon Company, a subsidiary of Talaat Moustafa Group, acquired 51% of Legacy Hotels Company, which owns the hotel. [8]
Isma'il Pasha, also known as 'Ismail the Magnificent, was the Khedive of Egypt and ruler of Sudan from 1863 to 1879, when he was removed at the behest of Great Britain and France. Sharing the ambitious outlook of his grandfather, Muhammad Ali Pasha, he greatly modernized Egypt and Sudan during his reign, investing heavily in industrial and economic development, urbanization, and the expansion of the country's boundaries in Africa.
The Winter Palace Hotel, also known as the Old Winter Palace Hotel, is a historic British colonial-era 5-star luxury resort hotel located on the banks of the River Nile in Luxor, Egypt, just south of Luxor Temple, with 86 rooms and 6 suites.
Al-Rifa'i Mosque is located in Citadel Square, adjacent to the Cairo Citadel. Its name is derived from the Ali Abu Shubbak who is buried in the mosque. Now, it is also the royal mausoleum of Muhammad Ali's family. The building is located opposite the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan, which dates from around 1361, and was architecturally conceived as a complement to the older structure as part of a vast campaign by the 19th century rulers of Egypt to both associate themselves with the perceived glory of earlier periods in Egypt's Islamic history and modernize the city.
The Cairo Opera House, part of Cairo's National Cultural Centre, is the main performing arts venue in the Egyptian capital. Home to most of Egypt's finest musical groups, it is located on the southern portion of Gezira Island in the Nile River, in the Zamalek district near downtown Cairo.
Marriott Hotels & Resorts is Marriott International's brand of full-service hotels and resorts based in Bethesda, Maryland. As of June 30, 2020, there were 582 hotels and resorts with 205,053 rooms operating under the brand, in addition to 160 hotels with 47,765 rooms planned for development.
Le Méridien is an American upscale, design-focused international hotel brand with a European perspective. It was originally founded by Air France in 1972 and was later based in the United Kingdom. Marriott International now owns the chain. As of June 2021, it had a portfolio of 109 open hotels with 29,439 rooms and a pipeline of 37 hotels with 9,585 upcoming rooms.
Boulaq, is a district of Cairo, in Egypt. It neighbours Downtown Cairo, Azbakeya, and the River Nile.
Zamalek is a qism (ward) within the West District in the Western Area of Cairo, Egypt. It is an affluent district on a man-made island which is geologically a part of the west bank of the Nile River, with the bahr al-a'ma cut during the second half of the 19th Century to separate it from the west bank proper. The northern third has been developed into a residential area, which was home to 14,946 people during the 2017 census. The southern two thirds are mostly sports grounds and public gardens, a stark green reserve in the middle of Cairo.
The Gezirah Palace was one of the Egyptian royal palaces of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty. It is located in the Zamalek district on Gezira Island in the Nile, just west of Downtown Cairo.
Khairy Pasha Palace is a neo-Mameluk building and former palace of Khairy Pasha, located on 113 Qasr El Eyni Street, in Tahrir Square, Cairo. It served as the American University in Cairo's Tahrir Square campus since 1920 until 2008 when the new campus was inaugurated in New Cairo. The building in the photograph on the right was originally the Girls' School of the Greek Community of Cairo. In 1964 it was sold to the AUC and served as the Greek Campus.
The Qasr el Nil Bridge, is a historic swing bridge structure dating from 1931 which replaced the first bridge to span the Nile River in central Cairo, Egypt. It connects Tahrir Square in Downtown Cairo on the east bank of the river, to the southern end of Gezira/Zamalek Island. At the bridge's east and west approaches are four large bronze lion statues; they are late 19th-century works by Henri Alfred Jacquemart, French sculptor and animalier.
Gezira is an island in the Nile, in central Cairo, Egypt. The southern portion of the island contains the Gezira district, and the northern third contains the Zamalek district.
Mohamed Ahmed Abboud Pasha (1889–1963) was a prominent Egyptian industrialist, engineer and investor. Abboud Pasha was self-made, eventually rising to great wealth and was, by the 1950s, widely regarded as one of the top 10 richest men in the world.
Qasr El Nil Street, is a street in downtown Cairo, Egypt, one of the biggest streets in Cairo, with many businesses, restaurants, and an active nightlife.
Garden City is an early-20th-century real estate development loosely based on the English garden city movement, and is today a mixed residential and administrative quarter in qism Qasr al-Nil in the West District of Cairo, Egypt. It spans the east side of the Nile just south of Wust al-Balad (downtown) and the famous Midan Tahrir, and north of Old Cairo. Two main streets, Qasr al-Ayni Street on the east and the Nile Corniche on the west, delineate its eastern and western borders. Garden City is known for its quiet, upscale, and secure atmosphere. The United States, British, Italian and more Embassies are located there.
The Mena House Hotel is a historic hotel established in 1886, located outside Cairo, Egypt. It is owned by Legacy Hotels Company, affiliated to Talaat Moustafa Group.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Cairo:
The Immobilia Building is considered Cairo´s First Skyscraper. It is located in Downtown Cairo, the urban center of Cairo, at the intersection of Qasr el-Nile and Sherif streets. With a surface area of 5,444 square meters, it remains one of the biggest buildings in the Downtown area to date.