Unless historical palaces are turned to museums, average Egyptians will never gain access to them, writes Samir Raafat* Heliopolis Palace Hotel turned into the Federation of Arab Republic's headquarters, Kasr Al-Ittihadiya, in 1972 and later into an executive presidential palace during Mubarak's rule. More than half a century after Nasser's Free Officers vowed to turn this nation into a republic "by the people and for the people", its citizenry is as removed from the temples of power as they were millennia ago when Pharaohs ruled the land and high priests prohibited access to temples. Except for a very few halls in Abdeen, few Egyptian citizens have ever seen the gilded interiors of the former royal palaces of Tahra, Koubbeh and Ras Al-Tin. And unless plans to turn them into public historic sites ever surface, there is no chance they ever will. Not so Kasr Al-Ittihadiya, now perhaps the most august and restricted of them all. While few others than national leaders and journalists can visit it these days, there are still some around who remember having frequented it as the Heliopolis Palace Hotel. International conferences, weddings and honeymoons took place there, as did the coveted apres courses celebrations -- the races at the nearby Heliopolis Sporting Club were second to none. Although veterans are probably not around anymore to remind us, during the First World War the hotel was requisitioned and turned into a British military hospital. Like Heliopolis itself, the grandiose Palace Hotel rose out of the desert wastes in 1908-10 when lengthy sojourns in Egypt were a social ritual and the hotel's register resembled a leaf out of Burke's Peerage. Its first proprietor was Monsieur Marquet. Its inaugural director, Herr Doerhoefer, had been with the Mena House, and its first food and beverage manager was Monsieur Bedard, assisted by Chef Gouin. They had come from the Paillard Restaurant in Paris. On 1 December 1910, all four were on hand to greet Egypt's best as they celebrated the official launch of Africa's most luxurious hotel. Conceived by Belgian architect Ernest Jaspar, the hotel boasted 400 rooms including 55 private apartments. Its banquet halls were amongst the biggest anywhere. The utilities were the most modern of their day. All had been constructed and put together by the contracting firms Leon Rolin & Co and Padova, Dentamaro & Ferro, the two biggest civil contractors in Egypt. Messrs Siemens & Schuepert of Berlin fitted the hotel's web of electric cables and installations. As though intentional, its severe, almost forbidding exterior contrasted sharply with the sumptuousness of the interior. A 1912 visitor recounts: "Beyond the reception offices are two lavishly decorated rooms, in Louis XIV and Louis XV styles respectively, and then comes the central hall, which is a dream of beauty and symmetry. Here the architecture, which is responsible for so many wonderful effects in Heliopolis, reaches its artistic zenith. From every nook and cranny hang, suspended like stalactite pendants, Damascus-made Oriental lamps of fantastic loveliness." To give us a sense of the central hall's monumental dimensions the overwhelmed visitor continues: "Above soars the dome rising upward in a bold scheme of frolicsome fancy with all the involved convulsions of Oriental ornamentation. No photograph or description could do justice to the wondrous and elusive loveliness of the scene, which is baffling to the language as it is to the lens." "C'est une merveille!" exclaimed the King of Belgium in 1911 when he entered the main hall accompanied by his consort. The royal couple spent an entire month at the Heliopolis Palace Hotel, during which time Queen Elizabeth, who was recovering from typhoid, slowly regained her health. The dry air of Heliopolis had been strongly recommended by her doctors in Brussels. Another king was equally taken by the hotel, so much so that before his wife died in 1915 she urged him to build a hotel "like the great Heliopolis Hotel in Cairo." As Milton S Hershey finally prepared to construct his hotel in Pennsylvania, USA, he contacted the architect of the Heliopolis Hotel and arranged to purchase his plans. But when it was estimated that the cost of duplicating the structure would be $5 million, America's chocolate king abandoned the idea. A regular visitor to Egypt of that period, who couldn't believe his eyes upon visiting Heliopolis, was John Pierpont Morgan. Never before had the legendary tycoon seen architectural cross-fertilisation of such magnitude. The overall scene was so phantasmic he exclaimed in zest that the Heliopolis Company directors should be arrested for having conceived such a mind-boggling endeavour! And that Taj Mahal by the desert ... was it real? JP Morgan was in a tizzy! 's main dome that was so awe inspiring to kings and tycoons alike measured 55 metres from floor to ceiling. The 589 square metre hall, designed by Alexander Marcel of the French Institute and decorated by Georges-Louis Claude, was carpeted with the finest oriental rugs and fitted with large floor-to-ceiling mirrors, draperies and a large marble fireplace. Twenty-two Italian marble columns connect the parquet to the ceiling. To one side of the hall there was the grillroom, which seated 150 guests, and to the other was the billiard hall with two full-sized Thurston tables, as well as a priceless French one. The mahogany furniture was ordered from Maple's of London. The upper gallery contained oak-panelled reading and card rooms furnished by Krieger of Paris. The basement and staff area was so large that a narrow gauge railway was installed running the length of the hotel, passing by offices, kitchens, pantries, refrigerators, storerooms and the staff mess. Two wars interrupted the hotel's hospitality activities, and on both occasions the Heliopolis Palace Hotel was transformed into a hospital for British and Dominion soldiers, who became the largest single category of tourists to visit Egypt. Following the Second World War, air travel reduced the average tourist stay to a few days. Mass production and consumption introduced the era of the camera-clicking crowds. As tourism became a mega-industry, massive vertical hotels cropped up along the Nile with interiors calculated on the basis of return per square metre. Unable to compete, the Heliopolis Palace became a dinosaur. In the 1960s, the abandoned hotel was the unwitting home to various government departments and in January 1972 the sorry headquarters of a stillborn political union between Libya, Egypt and Syria (the Federation of Arab Republics), hence the current name of Kasr Al-Ittihadiya (Unity Palace). One by one, an untutored public and several dubious state organisations chipped its inimitable artefacts away. It was all over. The dustbin of history was waiting; perhaps the bulldozer and a demolition ball were not far behind. We shall never know. Whether by divine or temporal intervention, the Palace Hotel was granted a new lease on life. Situated within earshot of where President Mubarak lives, the former hotel was given a thorough facelift in the 1980s and declared the headquarters of the new presidential administration. Once again, the Taj Mahal of the desert became the focus of international attention. So will we lesser mortals ever get a virtual gape at its eye- popping interiors? Don't hold your breath. * The writer is the author of Cairo: The Glory Years.
