The Supreme Antiques want to change it and adapt it for a reception centre for high-ranking visitors to the Pyramids. Wonder whether the Taj Mahal of the Parthenon have a similar facility – they don’t.
They gave it to locals, as ever, unless they can find some 4th rate westerners, ARCHiNOS Architecture.
(The project was abandoned by the SCA and the design never carried out or paid for.)
Other photos.
Even the tree is mostly dead.
Palace architect Mustafa Fahmy built in 1946. He also designed Saad Zaghoul’s mausoleum and the Museum of Egyptian Civilization on Zamalek that has been closed for decades and under renovation for generations.
It’s a very unusual building with deco and Bauhaus flavors. Given bureaucratic standards it could end up as a McDonalds with a uniformed local licencee.
Now used as a rest house – but for tourist police, police and security forces – its in a bad state of disrepair and the once exquisite stained glass appears totally destroyed. It’s the responsibility of the Supreme Antiques but like lots of their responsibilities they ignore them.
http://cairobserver.com/post/3199768494 ... -in-helwan
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2002/603/hr1.htm
There is other stuff falling down. Here is a closed building owned by the Supreme Antiques on Zamalek – maybe it has a future - god knows what – never fix something up just get something new and expensive . It was the Museum of Egyptian Civilization now replaced by the new horror at Fustat and paid for by the west.
Of course there are dozens of palaces/houses in Alex and Cairo falling down, all under the control of the Supreme Antiques, maybe they are waiting for truck loads of UNESCO money just as old Cairo was 35 years ago.
They all had valuable contents a deal of which cannot be located but shows up from time to time in Christie’s and Sotherbys with no vendor shown. How you can sell a valuable object without a clear and public provenance escapes me except if you know the morals of these fine well-bred chaps and their 30% sales commission. https://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com ... sures.html Some suggest that they are more fences that auction houses.
