At the southern tip of the Manial Al-Roda Island in Cairo stands the Prince Mohamed Ali Tawfik Palace built in an exquisite early 20th-century architectural style that combines a blend of Fatimid and Mameluke elements along with Ottoman, Persian, Andalusian, Syrian, and Moroccan styles, all framed by European rococo and reflecting the prince’s deep appreciation of art and culture from across the Islamic world.

This historic palace, built between 1901 and 1929, is a hidden gem that displays a glimpse of the opulent lifestyle of Egyptian royalty during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, the palace is not just a relic of the past but also a vibrant symbol of the country’s artistic and historical legacy.

At the southern corner of the palace are 15 rooms centred around a courtyard with a small garden. The rooms display a rare collection of carpets, Arabic manuscripts, and paintings of members of the then ruling Mohamed Ali family, alongside metal artefacts, crystal glassware, writing instruments, clothing, textiles, furniture, and chandeliers.

In this area of the palace, Prince Mohamed Ali Tawfik’s private museum, curators, restorers, designers, and workers are racing against the clock to observe the deadline for its reopening following restoration. 

Armed with yellow vests and white gloves, workers are cleaning and consolidating the walls and reinforcing the ceilings and wooden elements, while restorers with their white gowns and technical tools are brushing the dust of time off the artefacts. 

“Work is at full swing,” Mohamed Ismail, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that the 15 rooms of the museum are now under development in order to host its treasured collection within a new exhibition scenario that will transform it into a new and prominent cultural and tourist attraction.

The development project also includes the installation of new lighting, ventilation, and security systems connected to intrusion alarms and state-of-the-art surveillance cameras.

According to the new exhibition concept, explained Moamen Othman, head of the Museums Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities, the most important artefacts have been selected and classified into specific collections, with each room dedicated to displaying a specific collection from Prince Mohamed Ali Tawfik’s treasures. 

There will be a room allocated to the prince’s family jewellery, another to showcase his manuscripts, a third will feature carpets and textiles, and others will display rare weapons, glassware, and porcelain. Additionally, there will be rooms dedicated to displaying paintings of family members, along with the personal belongings of the prince and of his mother Amina Hanem Elhami.

These include her famous silver bed known as the serir al-walda Pasha, or “Mother’s Bed”, along with some of her paintings and many other rare and important artefacts.

The Mohamed Ali Tawfik Palace was built in 1901 by Prince Mohamed Ali, the son of the khedive Tawfik and cousin of the late former king Farouk I, in an attempt to revive the Islamic architectural style in Egypt in opposition to the European styles commonly adopted for the royal family’s palaces. 

He chose the Al-Roda Island because it offered as its main attraction the remains of the Bostan Al-Kebir (The Grand Gardens) established in 1829 by the prince’s great-grandfather Ibrahim Pasha together with their banyan, cedar, royal palms and Indian rubber trees. 

Prince Mohamed Ali was concerned to restore the old gardens in a large dedicated enclosure known as the Manial Palace. He brought some of the rarest plant species from around the world to it in his attempt to do so. 

The palace was also considered to be a haven of Islamic art, with its façade and high gates giving the aura of a Fatimid fortress. The main entrance has a 14th-century Iranian design with the two towers that border it being built in the form of Fatimid minarets. 

Elements of Mameluke architecture can be seen in the palace’s Saray Al-Iqama (residence area), especially in its main gate, mashrabiya (woodwork), and glass-embedded windows, which overlook an Andalusian fountain. The palace’s mosque is built in the Moroccan style, and in the Throne Room the Ottoman style reigns. 

The Ottoman style also dominates the interior of the palace, which contains a rare collection of 350 Turkish carpets, Turkish chandeliers, shell-encrusted arabesque ensembles, exquisite wall ceramics, and a sun ring motif decorating the ceilings.

“The palace is home to a rare collection of valuable antiques that the prince collected from different parts of the world or picked up from the rubble of destroyed Mameluke and Ottoman houses in Cairo,” Othman told the Weekly. 

He said that Prince Mohamed Ali was keen on turning his palace into a museum, and so in 1908 he registered the Al-Manial Palace on Egypt’s Heritage List for Islamic Monuments. He devoted the annual revenue of some 2,213 feddans of his land to its maintenance, but this land was sequestrated after the 1952 Revolution. 

“The palace itself was never sequestrated, being registered as an antiquity,” Othman said, adding that in the prince’s will he intended to convert it into a museum. 

However, in 1965 according to a ministerial decree, 10 feddans of the palace’s gardens were brought under the jurisdiction of the Tourism Authority and its affiliate the EGOTH Company, which in turn rented the land out to a French company that constructed a number of two-storey wooden chalets on it. 

The company filled in a lake and cut down trees to build a new hotel with a swimming pool and tennis court. 

In 1984, another ministerial decree was issued designating the palace and its gardens as antiquities, but the French company did not vacate the garden until 1994 when EGOTH looked for another company to rent the land to. In 1997, a renovation plan was launched and the new Al-Manial Palace Hotel revealed. In the same year, a ministerial decree stipulated the removal of the original hotel and its encroachments on the building and gardens.

The Ministry of Culture won the argument over the building’s future. In 2000, the ministry cleared the site of 18 bungalows, a complex with a capacity of 300 rooms, and the hotel’s kitchens and swimming pool. A restoration project was launched, but major work on the palace’s restoration only started in 2005. It was officially inaugurated in 2013, following which the Hunting Museum inside was renovated and opened to the public in 2017.

The Hunting Museum displays stuffed animals, birds, and skeletons from the collection of former king Farouk and that princes Mohamed Ali Tawfik and Youssef Kamal collected during their hunting trips. Among the most beautiful and unique collection on display is the butterfly collection of prince Mohamed Ali Tawfik.

The palace’s gardens feature a diverse collection of plants and trees that prince Mohamed Ali acquired from around the world. This includes cacti, fig plants, palm trees, and bamboo. Visitors can enjoy strolling through these beautiful gardens, admiring the exotic tropical plants the prince so meticulously gathered. 

It is believed that both the prince and his gardener travelled to numerous locations to enhance the beauty of the grounds. Among the most admired plants in the collection are the cacti, which were sourced directly from Mexico.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly