After five years of extensive restoration, the exquisite Mohamed Ali Pasha Palace in Shubra is to be opened by President Hosni Mubarak this October. Nevine El-Aref reports On the Nile bank in Shubra, set in a splendid park planted with rare trees and shrubs, is Mohamed Ali's residential palace. Only part of the palace survives, but following restoration it now looks as majestic as it did 200 years ago. Over the last five years the palace, once known as the Egyptian Versailles, has been subjected to comprehensive restoration to save the exquisite early 19th-century buildings, which feature a blend of rococo and baroque styles. Complete with groves of shrubs, a labyrinth, a hippodrome, and a great expanse of water surrounded by galleries flanked by four pavilions, it also includes a mosque and large avenues lined with trees. Through the ages this magnificent palace, which was built over 13 years from 1808 to 1821 on an area of 11,000 feddans, has lost many of its features. It originally consisted of 13 buildings used by Mohamed Ali Pasha as a guest house for foreign ambassadors and members of his family. During World War I, the haramlik (main palace) was demolished by Aziza, a member of the royal family, when it was rumoured that the British were thinking of using it for military purposes. In 1935 King Fouad used the buildings as temporary residences for members of the Egyptian royal family and some part of the garden was destroyed during the construction of the Cairo-Alexandria agricultural road. A few years after the 1952 Revolution the palace garden became the premises of Ain Shams University's Faculty of Agriculture, and the site was turned into a farm complete with chicken coops, rabbit hutches, a barn, research laboratories and cultivated areas used by students for experiments. Today three sections of the original palace complex are still in place: the gabalaya, used as a residence for women; the fasqiya, a nymphaeum complex used for receptions and festivals, and the saqiya (watering well), which once supplied the palace with water from the Nile. In 1984 a presidential decree was issued to list the palace and its garden on Egypt's antiquities list and hand it over to the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), which in its turn will transform it into a museum. Although the decree was designed to put an end to misuse of the palace, it triggered a conflict with Ain Shams University. The Faculty of Agriculture refused to evacuate the buildings and the SCA did not want to start restoration work as long as the faculty was still occupying the premise. However, in 2000 Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni embarked on an inspection tour around the Shubra Palace and called for an immediate restoration project to save the magnificent Mohamed Ali palace -- in dire need of repair -- from massive deterioration. The ceilings painted with decorative foliage motifs and portraits of Mohamed Ali and his sons, set in medallions, had lost some of their elements, the walls were traced with cracks, and the marble bestiary -- frogs, lions, serpent , fish and crocodiles -- on the water fountain basin was damaged. The only obstacle standing in the way of restoration was the Faculty of Agriculture, which occupied most of the palace garden. After several meetings at which both sides tried to reach a compromise solution, it was agreed to build a wall separating the palace from the faculty, while the chicken coops and rabbit hutches which encroached on the saqiya, as well as the student hostel, have been moved out of the palace site. A separate entrance has been created for the palace. Ayman Abdel-Moneim, director of the Shubra Palace restoration project, said that the restoration was carried out on three phases. The first aimed at reinforcing the foundations of the three buildings (the gabalaya, which was in especially bad condition, the fasqiya and the saqiya ) and protecting them from water leakage. The second phase focused on the ceilings, walls, floors and marble columns and the decorative items of the fasqiya, while the third phase was devoted to the garden which included several exotic plant species. Abdel-Moneim told Al- Ahram Weekly that the fasqiya had now regained its original splendour as a stage for official ceremonials. He said the water basin was now filled and was floodlit at night, and its central marble island, which was used as an opera stage, was now ready to host orchestral, operatic and dance performances. "Restoring the palace was a real challenge," Hosni told the Weekly, adding that it would have been a great pity if this magnificent palace had fallen total victim to negligence. Hosni said the palace, once the stage of several great royal festivals, would this year witness the Ministry of Culture's celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of the 1973 October War, which would be attended by President Mubarak. Mokhtar El-Kassabani, professor of Islamic archaeology at Cairo University, told the Weekly that the Mohamed Ali Palace in Shubra had a distinctive architectural design known as the "garden palace" style, which was introduced by Mohamed Ali during the first half of the 19th century when modern urbanisation changed Shubra from a vast, empty area of agricultural land. The palace is embellished with Italian, French and Arabic decorative elements. Its main building, which was demolished during World War I, was built in white marble in the early 19th-century Orientalist style, with loggias and balconies adorned with metalwork and stucco arabesques. As the palace was reputed to have been splendid in decoration and furnishings, fortunes were said to have been made from the materials salvaged when it was demolished, which included paintings that were set into the walls. El-Kassabani continued that the only part that survived the destruction was the kiosk which featured a vast square pool with a marble island at its centre. Surrounding the pool is a cloister-like colonnade broken by four advancing terraces, all in white marble, exquisitely sculptured in a neo-classical, almost Pompeian style. The building and colonnades are enclosed on the garden side by a wall composed mainly of amber-coloured windows and four doorways opposite the advancing terraces. In the four corners of the colonnade, on semi-circular platforms, stand marble lions spouting water into the pool. The ceilings of the cloisters are painted with decorative motifs, among which is a portrait of Mohamed Ali set in a medallion, and, in the opposite ceiling across the water, a corresponding one of his son Ibrahim. The rooms of the building are grouped in the four corners. On the right, when entering the colonnade, is a drawing room with an exceptionally beautiful parquet floor inlaid with intricate designs made of rosewood. This is surmounted by a heavily sculptured ceiling painted dark blue and gold, with a handsome chandelier hanging from its centre. The room is furnished with 19th-century chairs in the style of Louis XV lined up against the wall. Two other suites in the corners of the building were used as bedrooms, with all the walls and ceilings gaily painted with oriental arabesques. In the fourth corner is the billiard room. The wall on the right on entering is decorated in the Italian manner of the period, depicting a romantic landscape with classical ruins; it is almost a trompe-l'oeil, but the flowing architectural lines that frame it are very Turkish. The three remaining walls are almost all windows, with on the whole length of the facing wall a deep divan. "Originally this had been the dining room, until King Louis-Philippe of France (1830-1848) sent Mohamed Ali the billiard set, with its superbly sculptured bronze-handled cues, and he housed it there," El-Kassabani said.
