Cairo rewards the traveller with no budget more than the one with a big one. Its oldest mosque is free, its greatest street is a public right of way, and a full meal of ful and taameya still costs less than a bottle of water at the pyramids.
Cairo's oldest intact mosque (879 AD), 6.5 acres of austere brick arcades around a courtyard, with a spiral minaret you can climb for rooftop views over the old city. Open 08:00–17:00 daily; entry free.
A kilometre of Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk facades between Bab al-Futuh and Bab Zuweila, pedestrianised and floodlit after dark. Walking the street costs nothing — only the individual madrasas sell tickets.
A living Mamluk necropolis where families occupy tomb courtyards beside the domed funerary complex of Sultan Qaytbay (1474), the dome once printed on the one-pound note. No gate, no ticket, no crowds.
Thirty hectares built on a 500-year rubbish mound, with the excavated Ayyubid city wall along its western edge and an uninterrupted sunset view over the Citadel and Sultan Hassan. Open 09:00–22:00, entry 40 EGP.
Cairo's flea market spreads across the ground beneath the Sayyeda Aisha flyover from dawn to roughly 14:00 on Fridays: car parts, pigeons, Ottoman door handles, secondhand galabeyas. Entry costs nothing.
A 24-hour Downtown institution off Sherif Street serving ful medames, taameya and fried aubergine sandwiches since the 1950s. A stacked sandwich runs 10–20 EGP; a full plate of ful with tahina and baladi bread stays under 40 EGP.
The produce market behind Orabi Square trades until well past midnight — guava, dates and prickly pear by the kilo, plus stalls pressing sugarcane to order. July mangoes go for 40–60 EGP a kilo if you bargain.
A 1937 ahwa with marble tables, ceiling fans and no music, split between a tea room and a beer room. Mint tea is 15 EGP and a Stella around 45 EGP, and nobody will move you along for occupying a table all evening.
Mar Girgis metro station opens straight onto a walled Roman quarter: the 7th-century Hanging Church suspended over a Babylon fortress gate, the crypt of Abu Serga and Ben Ezra Synagogue. Every church here is free to enter.
On Rhoda's southern tip, an 861 AD marble column stands in a conical stone shaft that measured the annual Nile flood and set that year's tax rate. Entry is 60 EGP, open 09:00–16:00, and you will likely have it to yourself.
Carved into the Mokattam cliff above Manshiyat Naser, the monastery amphitheatre seats 20,000 under raw limestone reliefs and is reached by climbing through the Zabbaleen recycling district. No entry fee at any hour.
The clifftop road above the Citadel delivers a 300-metre-high panorama across every minaret in the old city, with the Giza pyramids visible on the horizon on a clear evening. The railing is public and costs nothing.