Abdeen Palace Museum

This guide to Abdeen Palace Museum in Cairo turns on a single tense evening, February 4, 1942, when a British ambassador rings the palace with tanks and hands twenty-two-year-old King Farouk an already-drafted abdication decree. You'll hear his adviser Ahmed Hassanein lean in with a whispered word in Arabic, and the counteroffer Farouk makes instead of signing. The palace's gentler side turns up too, including a sword said to have belonged to Napoleon and a drawer of American campaign buttons Farouk collected for fun.