Cairo Gardens

Cairo expanded rapidly in the nineteenth century. Prior to this expansion, the old city center was located on the eastern side of the Nile River and much of the surrounding area had been cultivated farmland. Urban expansion encroached on these farmlands, but Mehmet Ali and Ibrahim Pasha established urban gardens for the cultivation of a wide variety of plants and trees by the 1830s. The construction of the Ismailia Canal in the late 1860s diverted water from the Nile and allowed previously flooded land on the Island of Zamalek and on the western edge of the Nile to be reclaimed. Ismail Pasha used these newly reclaimed lands to establish vast botanical gardens, and by the end of the century, Cairo became a site for seed collection and agricultural research. This map highlights these gardens established during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

However, gardens throughout the country have been shrinking, and trees systematically cut down. The highlighted area is what remains today of Cairo's oldest public gardens, with the exception of Al Azhar Park, which was only recently designed.

Click on a garden from the list below to see historic maps, photographs, and key historical information.

Al Andalus Garden

Built by Zulfugar Pasha in 1929, this garden was designed to resemble the gardens of the Alhambra of Granada. It is currently closed to the public.

Al Horreya Garden

Al Horreya was originally part of a larger argricultural zone of Gezira Island before development.

Al Azbakeya Garden

This land was originally a lake, but was drained and transformed into a park under Mehmet Ali. The gardens were designed in 1868 and were once a cental node for upper class sociability: cafés, shops, an opera house, and wealthy Egyptian and European residents invested in property in its vicinity. The first image shows the Azbakeya Gardens from an 1888 map of Cairo. The second depicts the gardens in 1874. The date of the third image is unknown, but illustrates the gardens as a space of leisure. (Image 1: 1888 Itinéraire de l'Orient. Egypte, Le Caire / dressé par L. Thuillier ; d'après le plan de Grand-bey Thuillier, Louis-François (1848-1919), Bibliotheque National de France. Image 2: Collection of Max Karkegi, Bibliotheque National de France. Image 3 source: 0041na00069, 0041na - Yusri & Nahed Nasrallah Collection, courtesy of the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut.)

Orman Botanical Garden



In the early nineteenth century, the Orman Botanical Gardens were dedicated to citrus tree orchards with approximately 10,000 trees. In the early 1870s, Khedive Ismail converted the citrus orchards into an approxmiately 95.2 feddan garden and testing ground for the acclimatization of imported trees and plants.

Ismaïl hired the French horticulturalist and landscape architect Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps to design the garden and to replace the existing citrus orchards with a forest of both native and non-native trees. Deschamps was famous for his involvement in the urban design projects in Paris under Napoleon III. Histories of the Orman Botanical Garden argue that Ismaïl Pasha wanted to mimic the Bois de Boulogne, a forested park on the western edge of Paris, and thus recruited Deschamps to design the Orman Botanical Garden in Cairo, yet the garden was part of a broader program of seed collection and acclimatization, and concerns about Egypt’s wood supply.

Delchevalerie claimed it cultivated over 3000 varieties of trees and other plants, and that catalogues of these plants were sent to botanical gardens and administrations in French, English, Spanish, and Dutch colonies to encourage the exchange of seeds.

Since it’s establishment, the garden area has been significantly reduced: first, the zoo took over half of the original plot, but today, only approximately 25 acres remain.

Zohriya Garden



Khedive Ismail recruited Gustave Delchevalerie (1841-1899), a Belgian botanist and landscape architect famous for as the head of the Park and Garden Service in Cairo in 1868. Among other gardens in the city, one of his first projects was to turn Gezirah Island into public and private gardens, which he divided into various sections, depending on the type of plants and the function of the gardens. The Gezira Gardens were completed in 1869, in time for the Suez Canal inaugurial celebrations.

The Gardens of Gezira originally covered 600 feddans and were dedicated primarily to the acclimatization of imported plants, and the Zohriya Gardens were dedicated to greenhouses. Delchevalerie boasts that he planted one million exotic trees, vegetables, and ornamental plants on the island. The greenhouses protected plants not only from cold nights and mornings in the wintertime, but also from dry winds.

Varieties of plants housed there included: pandanus utilis, cycas revoluta, and circinalis, cocos flexuosa, latania borbonica, corypha australis, etc.

Aquarium Grotto Garden



Khedive Ismail recruited Gustave Delchevalerie (1841-1899), a Belgian botanist and landscape architect famous for as the head of the Park and Garden Service in Cairo in 1868. Among other gardens in the city, one of his first projects was to turn Gezirah Island into public and private gardens, which he divided into various sections depending on the type of plants and the function of the gardens. The Gezira Gardens were completed in 1869, in time for the Suez Canal inaugurial celebrations.

On the western edge, he dedicated a small section to rocky grottos constructed by MM. Combaz and Dumilieu. The garden area included alpestre trees and other imported plants. It was after the Khedive’s reign, in the early 1900s, when the aquariums were added and fish brought to the garden from the Nile and elsewhere in Africa.

Manial Palace and Garden



Egypt’s government under Mehemt Ali and Ibrahim Pasha pursued the collection and acclimatization of new seeds in Egypt like other major powers in the nineteenth century. Their site of experimentation was primarily on Roda Island in the Nile River, adjacent to Cairo’s city center, which then became known for its orchards and tree plantations. Janet Abu Lughod described it as a “botanical forest” by the 1830s, and as Alix Wilkinson has argued, this project of forestation was intended to respond to Egypt’s need for wood. In 1829, Mehmet Ali and Ibrahim recruited two Scottish horticulturalists, James Traill and William McCulloch, and communicated with “agents” in London the import trees with the explicit aim of establishing a “‘forest of 200 acres’” for hardwood trees, most notably “several thousand young teak trees” and cedar wood, from India. Traill and McCulloch brought other plants for spices and fruit from India including rubber, ginger, arrowroot, mango, banana, peach, apricot, almond trees, among others. McCulloch was also sent on expeditions to Brazil for samples of sugar plants. Furthermore, Wilkinson and Rivlin argue that these expeditions were also of diplomatic importance. When the British Governor General requested safe access to Suez through Egypt, Mehmet Ali was willing to collaborate if in return he had access to plants from India. While the gardens on Roda were also open to the public (at least three days a week), the island was notably the site for experimentation for tree cultivation that furthered the Pasha’s concerns for state-building and attaining economic autonomy.

The Palace and redesign of the gardens were carried out by he Manial Palace was built by Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik (1875—1955), and today very little of the gardens and wooded area remain.

Al Azhar Park



Al Azhar Park is located on the eastern edge of Cairo and covers 30-hectares of land. While the area and the budges of the historic gardens of Cairo are shrinking, the Al Azhar Park is now the largest green space in the city. Unlike the other historical gardens on this map, the Al Azhar Park does not serve the same purposes of seed collection or experimentation. The park is funded by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and opened in 2005.