Museum of Islamic Art

Around 100,000 objects, of which roughly 2,500 are shown, and the selection is unusually generous with the things that are hard to photograph and unforgettable in person: mashrabiya screens cut from single blocks, enamelled mosque lamps that still hold their colour, a Mamluk fountain reassembled in the middle of a gallery.

What to look for

• The Mamluk metalwork — inlaid brass so fine the inscriptions read as pattern until you step close
• Enamelled and gilded glass lamps from the mosques of Sultan Hassan and Ibn Tulun
• An early Qur'an collection spanning Kufic through Ottoman
• Carpets, ceramics and a room of Ottoman tilework

It is arranged by material rather than dynasty, which sounds academic and works well — you see how one craft changed hands across six centuries. Ninety minutes is enough; two hours if metalwork is your thing. It sits ten minutes from Bab Zuweila, and the two together make a good half-day in Islamic Cairo without a bus.

The collection began in 1881 in the arcades of the Mosque of al-Hakim, assembled largely to stop architectural fragments walking out of Cairo's crumbling monuments and into the antiquities trade. It moved into the purpose-built neo-Mamluk building at Bab al-Khalq in 1903.

On 24 January 2014 a car bomb aimed at the police headquarters across the street tore through the façade and damaged 179 objects. The museum reopened in January 2017 after a restoration funded by Egypt, the UAE, Italy and UNESCO, and the work itself became part of the story — several galleries show conservation photographs beside the pieces they saved.

The building is worth a look on the way out: the façade is a deliberate anthology of Cairo's own Mamluk architecture, quoting doorways and window grilles from monuments a few streets away.