Northern Cemetery

This guide to the Northern Cemetery in Cairo, long known as the City of the Dead, follows how a Mamluk burial ground from the 1250s became a living neighborhood, with families sheltering inside the same domed mausoleums built for sultans and courtiers. It traces the scale of that community today and the losses that came in 2020, when bulldozers cleared graves for new roads, including a royal mausoleum tied to the family of Muhammad Ali himself. It also covers the activism that halted some of the demolitions in 2024. Look for the laundry lines strung between minarets and headstones as you walk.