Heritage for the Living in the “City of the Dead”

After the completion of conservation and adaptation for contemporary use of the maq‘ad of Sultan Qaitbey in 2016, ARCHiNOS moved on to the Heritage for the Living in the “City of the Dead” project starting in February 2018, and then from 2022, continued with another cycle of funding, also primarily from the European Union. This work dealt with other components of the Sultan’s magnificent funerary complex in the “City of the Dead” in Cairo. The project combined historic preservation, cultural activities, and social development work, with the overarching objective to secure long-term preservation of historic buildings and spaces by re-integrating them into the lives of the local community members and demonstrating that cultural heritage can be useful and beneficial for them.

The project, which ended in June 2025, treated buildings that were once parts of Sultan Qaitbey’s “royal suburb” in the cemetery: the mausoleum and oratory of Gulshani (monument No 100), the mysterious structure (No 412) erroneously listed as a sabil (public fountain distributing free drinking water), the service area including a water tank and a placement for a water-wheel (listed with No 183), and the area behind the mausoleum of Gulshani. This lot borders on two significant, but dramatically neglected tombs predating the Sultan’s complex, both of which have been conserved by ARCHiNOS: of amirs Mankalibugha and Ibn Ghurab. The lot also contains ruins of Qaitbey’s palace, never before explored or studied. (For more information about the monuments, click here.)

The cultural and social development components of the project were continuation of the activities that ARCHiNOS and its not-for-profit sister organization, the Sultan Foundation, have been carrying out in and around the maq’ad (reception hall) of Sultan Qaitbey, now operating as a place for culture and art in the neighbourhood – the MASQ, Multicultural and Artistic Space at Qaitbey’s.