Sultan Hassan and Al-Rifai Mosques

The two buildings face each other across a lane and look like a pair, which is deliberate and misleading: Sultan Hassan was begun in 1356 and al-Rifai in 1869, five centuries apart, the later one designed to answer the earlier. Sultan Hassan is the more remarkable, a madrasa built on a scale that nearly bankrupted the treasury, with a portal thirty-eight metres high, a cruciform courtyard holding four vaulted halls for the four schools of Sunni law, and a mausoleum chamber behind the qibla wall where the acoustics turn a whisper into a boom. Al-Rifai across the lane is a royal burial place: members of the Egyptian ruling family lie there, and so does the last Shah of Iran, who died in Cairo in 1980. The contrast between the two interiors is the whole point of visiting both.

What to look for

• The Sultan Hassan portal - a stone entrance nearly forty metres tall.
• The four-iwan courtyard - one vaulted hall for each school of law.
• The mausoleum acoustics - a chamber that amplifies a whisper.
• Al-Rifai's royal tombs - Egyptian royalty and the last Shah of Iran.

When to go

October to April, outside Friday prayers. Late morning light reaches into the Sultan Hassan courtyard. Two hours for both. The square between them is loud with traffic, so go inside quickly.

Things to know

The combined ticket is enforced and you cannot easily see only one. Both require shoes off and modest dress. Al-Rifai feels heavy and dim after the daylight of Sultan Hassan and some visitors find it an anticlimax. Touts and unofficial guides work the square outside.

Nearby

The Citadel rises directly above; Ibn Tulun is a short walk west.