Yacoubian Building

About Yacoubian Building

Building in Cairo, Egypt

The Yacoubian Building is a famous mixed-use building in Downtown Cairo at No. 34 Talaat Harb Street (formerly Soliman Pasha Street), built in 1937 in the Art Deco style by the Armenian architect Garo Balian. It is named after its owner, the Lebanese-Armenian businessman Hagop Yacoubian, head of Egypt's Armenian community, and during the Kingdom of Egypt it housed the upper class, cotton millionaires, members of the royal family and foreign nationals, with residents of many faiths and backgrounds. After the 1952 revolution its apartments passed to army officers and their families and the rooftop became home to poorer tenants; from the 1970s the building turned to mixed use with shopfronts, offices and flats. It became known worldwide when the novelist Alaa Al Aswany used a fictionalised version of it as the setting of his 2002 novel The Yacoubian Building, in which the building stands as a metaphor for the changes in Cairo and Egyptian society; the book caused a sensation and was adapted into a 2006 film directed by Marwan Hamed and later a television series, with a larger building on Talaat Harb Square used for the film's exteriors. Today it is a stop for lovers of literature and architecture on a walk through Khedival downtown, normally admired from the outside.

Where:

Cairo, Egypt