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21 October at 05:00
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Travel & Tourism News
Cairo's Historic Gayer-Anderson Museum Reopens After Renovations
Cairo’s Gayer-Anderson Museum has been renovated to be more accessible to people with disabilities.
The Gayer-Anderson Museum, also known as Beit Al Kritliyya, is a testament to the richness of Egyptian culture, and the brilliance of Islamic architecture. Once a pair of homes, brought together to form a museum, it has been closed for renovations while the Supreme Council of Antiquities developed its services through the joint efforts of the UNESCO Regional Office for Science in Arab Countries, the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, and the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
The development project for the Gayer-Anderson Museum was mostly focused on making the heritage site more accessible for people with disabilities. Guidance and introductory panels have been set up to show the itinerary of a visit to the museum, with the names of the halls and a QR code displayed for easier access to information about particular features. Braille sign boards have also been set up for people with visual impairments.
Much work was put into the development of the museum’s restoration lab, cleaning and renovating the museum’s floor and treating canopies and other furniture. The outer areas have also been equipped with wooden benches and new lighting and firefighting systems, while the main entrance gate received renovations as well. The Gayer-Anderson Museum is a combination of two Ottoman-period houses. The first was built in 1545 by scholar Abd Al-Qadir Al-Hadad, and was owned by Lady Amina bint Salem. The second house was built by a merchant, Hajj Muhammed Al-Jazar, in 1631, and was passed down through his family until it came into the ownership of a woman from Crete, which is why it was then named Beit Al-Kritiya (‘Home of the Cretan Woman’).
In 1907, British Major Robert Grenville ‘John’ Gayer-Anderson, aka ‘The Irish Pasha’, was deployed to Egypt and became fascinated with the then-romanticised Arab lifestyle. Deeply Orientalist, Gayer-Anderson made a request to the Assembly of Preserving Arab Antiquities in 1935 to buy both houses and furnish them in an Islamic style.
Over the following years, Gayer-Anderson gathered an impressive collection of pharaonic, Islamic, and Asiatic antiquities and artefacts, promising that, upon his death or his return to his homeland, his home will come into the possession of the Assembly of Preserving Arab Antiquities. In 1942, Gayer-Anderson left Egypt permanently, and the Assembly turned his home into an open museum.
Source: Scene Now https://scenenow.com/.../Cairo-s-Histor ... r-Anderson...
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