Giza's culture runs past the plateau: the Grand Egyptian Museum holds Tutankhamun's full 5,000-piece trove, Harraniya weavers have run handlooms since 1952, and Fustat potters still fire cobalt glaze. Three days of galleries, looms and opera.
The world's largest museum devoted to one civilisation: 500,000 m² of Heneghan Peng-designed alabaster-toned concrete, a 6-storey Grand Staircase of 87 royal statues, and the complete 5,398-object Tutankhamun collection shown together for the first time. Opens 09:00, last entry 17:00.
The 3,200-year-old Ramses II obelisk is suspended on four supports so visitors walk beneath and read the pyramidion cartouche from below — the only such display worldwide. Outside, the 600-metre translucent alabaster facade is cut into Sierpinski triangles aligned on all three pyramids.
Ramses Wissa Wassef's 1952 experiment gave village children looms and no drawings to copy; their untutored tapestries now hang in the Vatican and the V&A. The mudbrick vaulted studios by Hassan Fathy's tradition still house working weavers and a batik and pottery workshop.
The late sculptor's own house and garden studio in the palm groves, holding roughly 150 bronzes, granite birds and papyrus-pulp paintings. Henein led the 1998-2004 Sphinx restoration, and the yard displays the maquettes he made while studying its limestone weathering.
Around 10,000 works charting Egyptian modernism from Mahmoud Mokhtar's 1928 'Egypt's Awakening' studies through the 1940s Art and Freedom surrealists to Inji Efflatoun's prison paintings. Four floors on the Cairo Opera grounds, 20 minutes across the Nile from Giza.
The 1988 Japanese-funded replacement for the 1869 opera destroyed by fire, built in Islamic-modern style with a 1,200-seat Main Hall and a 500-seat Small Hall. Home to the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, the Cairo Opera Ballet and the Arabic Music Ensemble in the Gomhouria season.
A Ramses Wissa Wassef-designed pavilion holding the collected works of Egypt's first modern sculptor, who died in 1934 aged 43. Granite and bronze fellaha figures, the 'Bride of the Nile', and the plaster studies for the Nahdet Misr monument that stands outside Giza's zoo.
A converted downtown flat where the Mazaher ensemble — among the last zar practitioners in Egypt, led by women singers — performs the trance-percussion ritual every Wednesday at 20:00. Nubian and Sufi nights fill the other evenings; seating is roughly 60 cushions.
Founded 1908 by Marcus Simaika inside the Babylon fortress walls, holding some 16,000 objects: Bawit monastery frescoes, the Nag Hammadi codices, and mashrabiya ceilings salvaged from demolished Coptic houses. The finest carved-wood interiors in the country.
Built atop the Roman water gate so its nave floor floats above the passage — a glass panel in the floor shows the drop. Thirteen pillars for Christ and the apostles, a 7th-century marble and ebony pulpit, and 110 icons, the oldest dating to the 8th century.
Roughly 130 workshops relocated here in the 1990s, throwing and firing on the site of Egypt's first Islamic capital. Watch the wheel work and cobalt-glaze dipping, then buy direct at Souq al-Fustat's arcaded craft market next door — prices run a third of Khan al-Khalili's.
The 1505 Mamluk wikala of Sultan Qansuh al-Ghouri hosts the Al-Tannoura Egyptian Heritage Dance Troupe under a restored timber-roofed courtyard, performing the multi-skirted Sufi spinning dance with rababa, ney and mizmar accompaniment. Free entry, no reservations.