With a length of about 6.5 kms, the city of the dead (مدينة الموتى) in Cairo is really a large ancient cemetery, except that it’s Islamic style, where a family will have one grave site where everyone is buried. In Islam, people are not buried, but rather left in underground rooms after being washed, purified and made ready to meet God. This part of Cairo has many many mausoleums in classic Islamic architecture, it looks like an ancient city in the middle of Cairo. Over the years, the city of the dead became a residence for more and more people for many reasons, but mostly because they had no where else to go and ended up converting their familty plots to homes. Here, no one knows anything, so just look around and don’t ask too many questions.
