Palace Intrigue

Front facade of the Baron Empain Palace. Photos provided by the author.

If you head southwest from Cairo International Airport in the direction of downtown, a majestic deep terracotta red South Asian-styled palace arises on your left just a few miles into your journey. You might even be surprised that the city of countless minarets and thousands of years of pharaonic civilization would welcome you with an estate decorated and protected by carved reliefs of Hindu deities. If you pass by them at night, you’ll find the palace and its decorative residents magnificently and ominously lit, offering a glimpse into the enigma and apprehension long associated with the Baron Empain Palace.

Although the lion’s share of tourism in Egypt focuses on its ancient history, its best kept secret—in my opinion—is Cairo’s treasure trove of historic house museums of the modern period. Dozens of glamorous villas and palaces of the dynastic royal family during the rule of the Khedivate (1867-1914) and monarchy (1914-1952) as well as private estates of notable twentieth century intellectuals, artists, and public figures are open for public education and enjoyment.¹ But perhaps one of the most iconic structures among this rich cultural landscape is the Baron Palace.

Built between 1907-1911, the palace was erected as the private residence for Édouard Louis Joseph Empain, a Belgian industrial tycoon whose Empain Group comprised fiscal, transport, metallurgical, and electricity companies that facilitated the construction of railway infrastructure from Paris to the Belgian Congo.² Arriving in Egypt by way of India in 1904, the Baron also had a significant impact on Cairo’s urban development and public transportation. He is largely responsible for developing the Heliopolis (or Masr Gedida) district of northeast Cairo, where the palace is located, through his Heliopolis Oases Company as part of an earlier concession to build Cairo’s first tram network.³ Inspired by the Hindu temples of the eastern Indian state of Odisha and the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia, his Cairene terracotta concrete palace fuses a Beaux-Arts architectural style with Indian/Khymer designs that stands prominently alongside one of the largest highways in the city.⁴

One of many statues of the Hindu Goddess Shiva throughout the Palace complex.

During the latter half of the twentieth century, the estate became the fixation of macabre rumor and legend due in part to imaginative public speculation but also supported by a series of tragedies associated with the palace as well as circumstances surrounding the Empain family. The Baron himself was not a benevolent entrepreneur but a calculated opportunist with direct economic ties to the brutal Belgian colonial regime in the Congo under King Leopold II.⁵ Baron Empain’s railway lines aided Leopold to consolidate and maintain infrastructural control of the Congo Free State (1885-1908) and later the Belgian Congo (1908-1960) even as Leopold’s genocidal campaign against the Congolese to build his rubber empire became widely known.⁶

Furthermore, Belgian companies like the Baron’s endeavored to maintain their monopolies in transportation and energy to the specific exclusion of Egyptian investors and capital. His personal life in Cairo was markedly more troubled and characterized by illicit affairs and deaths in the palace.⁷ Mysterious circumstances involving the death of his wife and several domestic workers in the residence as well as alleged deaths of other family members plagued his reputation. The last Empain to reside in the palace was the Baron’s son, Jean, and following his 1946 death, his daughters kept formal ownership until selling the estate in the 1950s. The decades that followed witnessed the palace fall into neglect and disrepair.⁸

A statue of the Hindu mystical animal, Yali.

The gradual dilapidation of the palace added to its grim associations that earned the estate its locally-known title of “asr al-ra’eb” or “the palace of horror.” Many considered the Baron Palace haunted or at the very least imbued with the specter of its founder’s past. Yet in 2017 under the direction of the Arab Contractors Company, assigned by the Engineering Authority of the Egyptian Armed Forces and in cooperation with the Ministry of Antiquities, a two-year restoration campaign of the palace took place. The palace reopened in 2020 as a local history museum that tells the story of the palace’s construction, the cosmopolitan history of Heliopolis up to the present day, as well as highlighting the Egyptian builders of a new and more inclusive communal life in the district.⁹

Exhibit panel on the contributions of Egyptian architect Habib Youssef Ayrout to the construction of Heliopolis.

Upon entry, the first floor is dedicated to outlining the development of the palace and its environs. A welcome addition to the narrative of European financiers, developers, architects, and designers of the Heliopolis Oases Company is the inclusion of the only documented Egyptian on the design team—Habib Youssef Ayrout. He was particularly important to the development of residences for the working class that made daily life possible in Heliopolis in those days—from housekeepers to craftsmen to doormen. We learn that his sons continued their father’s contributions with the company through their work in architectural and engineering capacities.

As we move to the second floor via a scenic marbled and wood-paneled stairwell outfitted with a glamorous glass chandelier, we find exhibits dedicated to the Egyptian labor that built these enduring fixtures of the local community and later conserved and restored them. To your immediate left are photographs detailing the work of local conservation specialists who worked on ensuring the structural integrity of the building, as well as restorers who carefully reanimated the decorative elements long neglected to the wear and tear of time. This room also has a video replaying the transformation of the space over the two-year process in Arabic, with English subtitles, and an accessible sign language interpretation.

A display panel with blueprint and other archival reproductions related to the Palace.

If you follow the staircase from the second floor, it narrows into the rooftop entrance that you pay a well-worth extra fifty Egyptian pounds to see. From the top, you can survey this area of Heliopolis from a beautiful terrace the Baron used to host gatherings and parties over a hundred years ago. The museum guards will point out several of their favorite features, including an elevator they claim was the first built in the Middle East. Hindu deities and decorative features adorn this space where you can catch the sunset over the city during the wintertime as the museum closes just after 5pm.

Looking down from the top of the Baron Empain Palace.

As someone who had a previous career in historic house museums, my favorite exhibits are those toward the end of the second-floor hall which show visitors photographs, maps, and other ephemera of what Heliopolis has meant to Egyptians over the course of the latter twentieth century.¹⁰ Today, I rely on these public histories and locally-generated knowledge to think through my dissertation research which examines how religious communities in twentieth century Cairo articulated their identities and lived with other communities of difference. Although Heliopolis was originally established as an upper class and European enclave, during the mid-twentieth century it became known for its diverse and multi-class character. Visitors from Egypt and abroad can learn of this development and its landscape of mosques, churches, parks and other landmarks that have come to define the neighborhood’s unique identity.

The rehabilitated estate and the fresh reinterpretation of its colonial past is a welcome homage to the twentieth century heritage of Cairo. Indeed, it’s possible that jinn and spirits and ghosts still reside among the marble columns of its interior or serve as companions to the various statues of Yali scattered among the exterior of the building. Yet, even in surveying this potentially haunted space, I turn to the possibility of reclaiming and reconfiguring imperialist narratives of the past. I think about these possibilities as I witness young brides taking photos with their beloveds among the gardens and see teens posing for Instagram posts. Perhaps we can enjoy the Baron’s palace without having to apotheosize him. Maybe it’s possible to reappropriate and reclaim a space erected for much different purposes to one that can be generative and filled with joy for communities that outlasted its original intent.

One of the views from the Palace rooftop.

1. Some of my personal favorites include Manial Palace, the Royal Carriage Museum, as well as the personal homes-turned- house museums of Taha Hussein, Oum Kalthoum, and Gamal Abdel-Nasser.
2. Hatem Maher, “Ghosts laid to rest as Cairo’s 109-year-old Baron Empain Palace opens for visitors,” ABC News, June 30, 2020.
3. Ajay Kamalakaran, “When a Belgian baron built a ‘Hindu palace’ near Cairo,” Scroll.in, January 18, 2022.
4. Even though the palace resembles a Hindu temple, it is not an actual religious site. Its look is more the result of the tastes of the architect and owner, not a local religious community.
5. The Empain Group’s archives contain detailed information on this business relationship between Baron Empain and Leopold II with material outlining the Baron’s railway and mineral prospecting projects in the Congo. For more information, see the finding aid here.
6. For more information on King Leopold II’s colonial exploits and horrifying colonization of the Congo and its people during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, kindly consult Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost : A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Second Mariner, 2020.
7. Dina Hussein and Lina Attalah, “Heliopolis: A brave new city,” Almaydeen, January 21, 2020.
8. Even the Baron’s commercial success in Cairo was only made possible by cheap land purchases facilitated through concessions to colonial and foreign investors during the British occupation of Egypt. He used these privileges to market the development of Heliopolis as a “luxurious” haven for a growing European population in Cairo and local elites looking to whet their upper class appetites at the turn of the century.
9. Nevine El-Aref, “Baron’s Palace to reopen,” Ahram Online, January 21, 2020.
10. For more of Amy’s writing and work with historical societies, please see her 2021 Contingent Magazine essay, “The Great History of Small Things.”