Wikala of al-Ghuri

This early sixteenth-century caravanserai near the Al-Azhar district was built to house traveling merchants and their goods, one of the best preserved of its type in Cairo. Rooms open onto a tall galleried courtyard, with storage and stabling below and lodgings above, all screened by carved wooden balconies. Restored as a cultural center, it now hosts craft workshops, exhibitions and folk performances. Its survival gives a rare, intact picture of the commercial architecture that once supported the trade routes converging on the medieval city.