Cairo

The pyramids on the Giza plateau were built more than 4,500 years ago, near Memphis, capital of the Old Kingdom. Cairo itself grew later: the Romans kept a fortress called Babylon here, and in 641 Arab armies founded Fustat beside it. In 969 the Fatimid dynasty built a new walled city and named it al-Qahira, 'the Victorious'. Under Saladin, who built the Citadel in the 1170s, and the Mamluk sultans who followed, Cairo became one of the largest and richest cities in the world, filled with mosques, madrasas and caravanserais. Ottoman rule began in 1517. In the nineteenth century Khedive Ismail laid out a European-style downtown, and modern Cairo grew into the Arab world's largest city and its cultural heart.

Cairenes joke that their city never sleeps, and the traffic agrees. Street food is a way of life: koshari, a hearty mix of rice, lentils, pasta and spiced tomato sauce, ful medames for breakfast, and sugarcane juice on every corner. Ahwas, traditional coffee houses, are where people meet to talk, play backgammon and smoke shisha late into the night. Egyptian cinema and music, from Umm Kulthum to modern mahraganat, are loved across the Arab world. Friday is the weekly day of rest.