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Bookmark & shareWhere the ancient and modern mix furiously.
Cairo isn't a gentle city. Home to more than 16 million Egyptians, Arabs, Africans and sundry others, the 'Mother of the World' is an all-out assault on the senses. Chaotic, noisy, polluted, totally unpredictable and seething with people, the sheer intensity of the city will either seduce or appal.
Mud-brick houses lean up against towering modern office blocks, flashy cars crowd donkey-drawn carts. Cairenes see nothing strange in this. They aren't driven by the Western obsession to update and upgrade, possibly because they live in such close proximity to millennia of history (when the pollution haze lifts the Pyramids appear).
Fast Facts
Population
16,500,000
Currency
Name: Egyptian Pound
Code: EGP
Symbol: £E
Electrical Plugs
220V 50Hz
Languages Spoken
Official: Arabic
Time Zones
GMT/UTC +2
Country Dialing Code
+20
Weights & Measures
Metric
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