Al-Azhar Park

For five centuries the site was Cairo's rubbish tip, a mound of debris rising thirty metres above the medieval city, and in the 1990s the Aga Khan Trust for Culture bought it and turned it into a park. Clearing it required moving something like a million cubic metres of fill, and the excavation uncovered a long buried stretch of the twelfth-century Ayyubid city wall, which was conserved and now forms the park's western edge. What sits on top is a formal landscape of palm avenues, water channels in the Islamic garden tradition, lawns and a hilltop restaurant terrace, and because the ground is so high the view west takes in the whole medieval skyline of domes and minarets with the Citadel to the south. The project also funded housing and job schemes in the Darb al-Ahmar quarter below.

What you actually see

• The skyline view west - domes and minarets of medieval Cairo from the ridge.
• The Ayyubid city wall - a twelfth-century rampart uncovered during construction.
• Formal water channels - the Islamic garden plan running down the spine.
• Palm avenues and lawns - the largest public green space in central Cairo.

When to go

October to April, and late afternoon into dusk for the view and the call to prayer rising from the city below. Fridays and holidays are full of Cairene families, which is part of the appeal but not the moment for quiet. Two to three hours.

Honest expectations

There is an entry fee, which keeps it calmer than a public park but also means it is not free to locals. It is a modern designed landscape, not a historic garden. The restaurants on the terrace are expensive by Cairo standards. Shade is limited on the open lawns.

Nearby

Darb al-Ahmar and the eastern gates are directly below; the City of the Dead is south along the ridge.