
Al-Azhar Park
Landscaped hilltop park built over a five-century rubble mound, with lakes, gardens and skyline views of medieval Cairo.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Al-Azhar Park in Cairo starts with five centuries of the city's garbage piled against the old medieval walls, and the 1984 conference where the Aga Khan asked why Cairo had no park and decided the answer would be built on top of the trash. It follows the 1990s crews hauling away roughly a million and a half cubic meters of rubble to reach solid ground, and what that digging turned up along the way. Listen for what the excavators found buried beneath the mound before the gardens went in.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Orman Garden
Nineteenth-century royal garden turned public park, with a lotus pond and rose garden.
Islamic Cairo
Walled medieval quarter of soaring minarets, ancient gates and a dense maze of mosques and bazaars.
Saladin Citadel
Medieval hilltop fortress built to fend off Crusaders, later the stage for a ruler's bloody ambush of Mamluk commanders.
Bab al-Futuh
Twin round towers in a Fatimid city wall, hiding floor shafts for pouring boiling oil on attackers.
The Cave Church
Rock-hewn church and amphitheater carved into a mountainside, seating tens of thousands amid a garbage-collecting community.
Khan el-Khalili
Narrow lantern-lit lanes of a centuries-old covered bazaar built atop a demolished royal tomb.