Gayer-Anderson House Museum

About Gayer-Anderson House Museum

Art museum in Cairo, Egypt

The Gayer-Anderson Museum, known to Cairenes as Bayt al-Kritliyya, is an art museum standing against the wall of the Mosque of Ahmad ibn Tulun in the Khalifa district, close to Sayyida Zeinab. It consists of two 16th- and 17th-century houses, the house of Muhammad ibn al-Hajj Salim al-Jazzar and the house of Amna bint Salim, joined by a bridge, and is one of the finest surviving examples of Ottoman-era domestic architecture in Cairo. It takes its name from Major Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson Pasha, a British officer and collector who lived in the houses between 1935 and 1942 with special permission from the Egyptian government, restored and furnished them with his extensive collection of furniture, carpets, curios and antiquities, and then presented the whole to Egypt. The museum covers 4,000 square metres, of which 2,000 are built, and has 29 rooms distinguished by painted wooden ceilings with floral and geometric designs, as well as a sabil with its well. Its best-known rooms are the themed halls each furnished in the style of a different land, including the Damascus, Persian, Turkish, Indian, Chinese and Byzantine rooms, the birth room and the bride's room, and a roof terrace whose mashrabiya screens look out over the Ibn Tulun Mosque.

Where:

Cairo, Egypt