Baron Empain Palace

What is the Baron Empain Palace?

It is the private palace of Baron Édouard Empain, the Belgian engineer and financier who built the new desert suburb of Heliopolis in the early 20th century, designed to look like a Hindu-Khmer temple. Empain had made his fortune in railways and tramways. In 1906 he founded a company to build a garden city in the desert north-east of Cairo, linked to the centre by a fast electric tram, and he placed his own home on a rise where he could watch it grow.

The French architect Alexandre Marcel designed the palace in reinforced concrete, then a modern material, and covered it with carved elephants, serpents, dancers, Buddhas and Hindu deities inspired by Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the temples of Orissa in India. The result is unlike any other building in Egypt. Empain himself is buried in the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Heliopolis, which he also commissioned.

Why was it abandoned, and what happened in 2020?

After the Empain family sold it in the 1950s the palace stood empty for decades, gathering myths and graffiti, until the Egyptian state acquired it and restored it as a museum that opened in 2020. During its abandoned years Cairenes called it a haunted house; stories circulated of a tower that rotated with the sun and of secret tunnels to the basilica. The rotating tower, at least, is a legend: the structure never turned.

The restoration, completed in 2020, repaired the concrete and decoration, re-laid the gardens and lit the building at night. The rooms now hold exhibitions on the history of Heliopolis, with photographs, maps and plans of the early suburb, its trams and hotels. At the time of writing the palace also hosts events, so occasionally parts may be closed.

What should you see?

Walk all the way around the outside first, then go through the main floors and up to the roof terrace.

• The facades: the stepped tower, the terraces lined with elephants and mythical beasts, and the carved figures around the windows. Morning light shows the detail best.
• The interior: the restored halls with their marble and mosaic floors, and the exhibitions on Empain and Heliopolis.
• The roof: when open, it gives a view over Heliopolis towards the airport.
• The gardens: recently restored, with good angles for photographs of the whole building.

What else is there to see in Heliopolis?

Heliopolis is Cairo's finest early-20th-century suburb, built in a distinctive "Heliopolis style" that blends Moorish arches, Islamic domes and European planning. Walk or drive along Baghdad Street and around the Korba district for arcaded shopfronts and apartment blocks with balconies and crenellations. The Basilica of Notre-Dame d'Héliopolis is nearby, and the grand former Heliopolis Palace Hotel, opened in 1910, is now a presidential palace (Al-Ittihadiya) and can only be seen from outside.

The ancient city of Heliopolis (Iunu), centre of the sun cult, lay a few kilometres north-west at Matariya, where a single obelisk of Senusret I still stands. The modern suburb took its name from it. Matariya is also where Coptic tradition places the Virgin Mary's Tree on the Holy Family trail, described in our Christian Egypt guide.

How do you fit it into a trip?

The palace is ideal on an arrival or departure day, as it is only 15–20 minutes from Cairo International Airport. From downtown or Zamalek allow 40–60 minutes each way by car, and from Giza well over an hour, so it is not a good add-on to a pyramids day. A visit of about an hour, plus a short drive along Baghdad Street, fills a gap before an evening flight neatly. Our Cairo layover guide covers how to use spare hours near the airport.

Heliopolis is also a convenient base for travellers with very early flights, and a few hotels near the airport suit an overnight stopover. See our where to stay in Cairo guide for the pros and cons.

Tickets and tips

Buy tickets at the gate or online and check current hours on egymonuments.gov.eg, as they can change for events. Photography is generally allowed, though there may be a separate charge for professional cameras. There is limited shade in the grounds, so in summer go in the morning or late afternoon; the building is also lit at night and looks dramatic from the street. Stairs are steep in places and the roof may not suit anyone with limited mobility. Allow time to photograph the building from the street at Al-Orouba Road, the main airport road, where you see the full silhouette of the tower rising over the gardens.