Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre

The architect Ramses Wissa Wassef began the centre in 1952 on a simple premise: give village children looms, dyes and no instruction in what to make, and see what comes out. The children who started then wove for decades, their own children after them, and the resulting tapestries, made without cartoons or preliminary drawings, work directly from memory of the fields, birds, animals and villages around them. The buildings are as much of the point as the weaving: Wissa Wassef built in mud brick with domes and vaults, using the Nubian vaulting technique that needs no shuttering, and the compound of low domed workshops and gardens is a landmark of twentieth-century Egyptian architecture. There is a permanent gallery of early works and a museum of the founder's own house.

Highlights

• Tapestries woven without drawings - designs made straight onto the loom.
• Mud-brick domes and vaults - Nubian vaulting built without shuttering.
• Weavers at work - the looms in use in the workshops.
• The permanent gallery - the earliest works from the 1950s onward.

When to go

October to April, on a weekday morning when the looms are in use. It is quiet at all times and never crowded. Two hours. It fits neatly with a Saqqara or Dahshur day since it lies on the same road.

Good to know

It is a small place and a specialist interest; visitors expecting a large museum will find it modest. Tapestries for sale are expensive, reflecting the months of work in them. Opening hours are limited and it closes on some days without notice. Harrania is hard to find without a driver who knows it.

Nearby

Saqqara is a short drive south; the Giza pyramids are to the north-east.