Abdeen Palace
Jewel of royal palaces..
Abdeen is the jewel of the royal palaces..
The jewel of the nineteenth century, the Abdeen palace witnessed many events that contributed to the establishment of Egypt as an independent state, and from its establishment in 1872 until the revolution of 1952, this palace was a witness to 80 years of intense social and political events.
The palace contains 500 rooms, 5 large halls for celebrations, each containing 100 pieces of masterpieces of international art, it also contains halls and salons, a theater with hundreds of gilded chairs, and isolated places with curtains for women, called “haramlak”, and the reason for the name is that it is a forbidden area for foreign men.
The Abdeen Palace was built on 15 acres, with a garden area of 19 acres.
The story of the establishment of the palace, when the emperor of France Napoleon III invited Khedive Ismail to attend on behalf of Egypt in the World exhibition, which was held at the time in the French capital Paris, and received Khedive “Ismail” Baron “Hausmann” who planned to develop and rebuild the city of Paris, and took him on a tour around the European city, which is characterized by spacious streets, parks and gardens coordinated and new buildings in different styles, where Khedive Ismail was influenced and realized that it is necessary to become Cairo like other European capitals in architectural style.
With the great celebration of the opening of the Suez Canal, the most important navigational channel in the world linking the East and the West, which was prepared for the reception of the Kings of countries from Europe, including the French Empress Eugenie in the Abdin Palace, but the palace was not completed and therefore was prepared Villa Omar Khayyam, which later became the Marriott Hotel.
The Abidin Palace was built on the ruins of an old house owned by Abidin Bey, one of the princes of the Turks, who was the Emir of the Royal brigade.when the construction of the Abidin Palace began, several ponds were filled in and leveled, and several buildings adjacent to the Palace were purchased and removed. during the subsequent years, Khedive Ismail for several years bought the neighboring properties until the land area reached about 25 acres, as stated in the argument of ownership of the palace.
The palace contains many museums, including the Museum of niyashin and medals, the silver museum, The War Museum, which includes a few halls containing rare collections of weapons, and the Museum of historical documents, which contains a large collection of rare documents, which tells the story of Egypt’s historical development, from the accession of Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1805, until the end of the rule of Farouk I in 1952.