Cairo

Cairo is on the Nile, and has ancient origins in the vicinity of the Pharaonic city of Memphis. The city started to take its present form in 641 CE, when the Arab general Amr Ibn Al-Ase conquered Egypt for Islam and founded a new capital called Misr Al-Fustat, "the City of the Tents".

The legend is that Al-Ase, on the day he was leaving to conquer Alexandria, found two doves nesting in his tent. Not wanting to disturb them, he left the tent.

* ( ), in Heliopolis, to the northeast of the city around 15 km from Cairo's city centre – The busiest airport in Africa with more than 16 million passengers per year, it is also the largest in Egypt and is the main hub for the flag carrier EgyptAir and Nile Air as well as several other airlines and the primary entry point to the country. * Borg el Arab ( ) near Alexandria has far fewer flights and poor ground connections. * | url= | email= | address= | lat= | long= | directions= | phone= | tollfree= | hours= | price= | wikidata=Q28716932 | lastedit=2024-06-01 | content=As of 2025 it is served mainly by budget airlines, including Air Arabia, Air Cairo, Condor, EasyJet, Edelweiss Air, Flydubai, Flynas, Jazeera Airways, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Pegasus Airlines, SalamAir and Wizz Air. }} * | url= | email= | address= | lat=30.075833 | long=31.833333 | directions= | phone= | tollfree= | hours= | price= | wikidata= | lastedit=2025-06-03 | content=The airport in the New Administrative Capital sees very limited flights.

You will find that it's useful to have several maps handy if you are looking to get around Cairo on your own. Spellings of street and place names can vary from map to map and from map to actual location, and not every street will appear on every map. thumb|Cairo's metro, LRT and monorail network.

Line 4 (purple) is still under construction.

Scams against tourists are almost a national sport, though they're usually obvious. A good rule of thumb is that if someone approaches you on the street, they're trying to scam you.

Common scams are: #The place you're going to is closed, why don't you take my tour? (Taxi drivers may use this. You can avoid this by using Uber or Careem.) # You need help crossing the street?