Gayer-Anderson Museum (Bayt al-Kritliyya)

The Gayer-Anderson Museum is two joined Ottoman merchant houses from 1540 and 1631, right next to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Islamic Cairo. A foreign adult ticket costs about 120 EGP, and it is open 9 am to 5 pm.

The Gayer-Anderson Museum fills two neighbouring Ottoman houses, built in 1540 and 1631 and linked by a narrow staircase. Cairenes call them Bayt al-Kritliyya, "the House of the Cretan Woman". In the 1930s they could easily have been knocked down like many of the houses around them. Instead, in 1935, Major John Gayer-Anderson, a British army doctor with a passion for the East, was allowed to move in on condition that he restored the buildings and the antique collection inside.

When he left Egypt in 1942, the houses and everything in them passed to the state. Today they are among the best-preserved Ottoman merchant homes anywhere. Look for the original mashrabiya wooden screens, painted wooden ceilings, marble floors, a fine sabil (public water fountain) in the courtyard, the domed reception hall or qa'a, a hidden gallery where women could watch male guests below, and a roof terrace facing the spiral minaret of Ibn Tulun next door.

Film fans may know the rooms already: parts of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) were shot here.

What to see

• The domed qa'a with its octagonal marble fountain
• Original mashrabiya screens above the courtyard
• The roof terrace facing the Ibn Tulun spiral minaret
• Painted Ottoman wooden ceilings
• The door that opens straight into Ibn Tulun Mosque

Visiting

• Opening hours: 9 am – 5 pm
• Tickets: about 120 EGP for foreign adults
• Best time: pair it with the Mosque of Ibn Tulun next door
• Nearby: Al-Saliba Street, Cairo Citadel