Cairo Marriott Hotel (Gezirah Palace)

This grand hotel on Gezira Island incorporates a palace built in the 1860s to host the dignitaries who attended the opening of the Suez Canal. The original palace was commissioned by the ruler Ismail Pasha and lavishly decorated in an ornate European style with gilded halls and painted ceilings. Later converted and expanded into a luxury hotel with towers rising behind it, the historic core survives with its reception rooms and gardens. It stands as a monument to the extravagant modernizing ambitions of nineteenth-century Egypt.