Saladin · EG

Mosque of Muhammad Ali

Crowning the highest terrace of the Citadel of Saladin, the Mosque of Muhammad Ali is the skyline monument most people picture when they think of Cairo. Built for the Ottoman-appointed ruler Muhammad Ali Pasha and completed in 1848 on the site of demolished Mamluk palaces, its snow-white dome and pencil-thin twin minarets rise above the old city and can be seen from rooftops across downtown, Islamic Cairo and the Necropolis. Travellers know it as the "Alabaster Mosque" after the pale stone that panels its walls, inside and out. The interior is a single, light-flooded square sanctuary under a vast central dome ringed by half-domes and smaller corner domes, an unmistakable homage to the great imperial mosques of Istanbul. It is the largest mosque built in the first half of the 19th century and remains the most visible in the city. For a visitor, the mosque is the emotional centre of any Citadel visit: a place to linger under the dome, read the calligraphy, peer down from the courtyard at Cairo unfolding below, and pick up one of the city's strangest diplomatic anecdotes—French clocks traded for Egyptian obelisks.