Cairo Tower

A 187-metre concrete tower on Gezira Island, and the best place to understand the shape of Cairo. From the observation deck the city reads as a map: the Nile splitting around the islands, the medieval quarter and the Citadel to the east, the tower blocks of Mohandiseen west, and — on a clear day, usually in winter — the pyramids on the horizon to the south-west.

The shaft is a lattice of concrete, tapering slightly and flaring at the top, designed to suggest a lotus — the ancient Egyptian plant motif, rendered in 1960s concrete.

Practical

• Go late afternoon and stay through sunset into the lit city; that is the trip
• Winter and just after rain give by far the best chance of seeing the pyramids
• There is a revolving restaurant one level below the open deck
• Queues build in the evening, especially at weekends

The tower was built between 1956 and 1961, in the early years of Nasser's republic, and it was the tallest structure in Africa when it opened.

The story about the money

The tower comes attached to one of Cairo's favourite stories. It is widely told that the United States gave Nasser a large sum in cash — the figure usually quoted is around three million dollars — intended as a personal inducement to align Egypt with Washington. Nasser, the story goes, declined to be bought, and spent the money instead on a public tower overlooking the American embassy, so that it would be visible from their windows in perpetuity.

Cairenes sometimes call it, with relish, Nasser's gesture. The tale is very widely repeated and has never been documented; treat it as folklore that says something true about the period even if the details are unverified.

What it stood for

Whatever funded it, the tower belongs firmly to the ambitions of the 1950s and 60s: a modern, non-aligned Egypt building tall things in reinforced concrete, alongside the High Dam and the new industrial cities. It was designed by the Egyptian architect Naoum Shebib, and the lotus form was a deliberate attempt to root a thoroughly modern structure in an ancient vocabulary.

It was closed for years and looking its age before a restoration reopened it, and it remains one of the few places in the city built purely so that people could look at it — and from it.