Baron Empain Palace: History and Restoration

The Baron Empain Palace is a well-known historical Hindu-style palace in Egypt. It is located in the Heliopolis district, a suburb northeast of central Cairo. The palace was designed by an architect named Alexandre Marcel, who designed it to have a rotating base to access the sunbeams at all hours of the day. Georges-Louis Claude decorated the palace. Inspired by the Hindu temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, it was built between 1907 and 1911.

Baron Empain Palace and Heliopolis’ History and Origin:

Who is Baron Empain?

The idea behind the palace came to be when Baron Empain, a Belgian industrialist and colonial entrepreneur millionaire whose full name is Édouard Louis Joseph Empain, arrived in Egypt and took on many projects to implement in Cairo, including the settling and formation of Heliopolis and also to rescue one of his Belgian wife’s development projects; the construction of a railway line linking Al-Matariyyah to Port Said. In 1907, they began building the new town of Heliopolis in the Sahara desert ten kilometres from the centre of Cairo. In the middle of hotels, wide roadways, a golf course, and other grand amenities, the Baron commissioned the construction of his palace. Baron Empain called Heliopolis a “city of luxury and leisure.

Baron Empain used to travel to many places, but in India, he was primarily inspired by the Hindu temples of Orissa and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Empain loved Egypt so much and made a fateful decision to stay in Egypt until his death. He wrote in his will that he wanted to be buried in Egypt even if he passed away outside of its borders. He was named Baron Empain or held the title of Baron when the King of France awarded it to him to appreciate his efforts in building the Paris metro.

Empain was a distinguished engineer. He also considered establishing a metro line within the neighbourhood to attract the most significant number of Egyptians to live in this new suburb, where he commissioned the Belgian engineer André Barcelona, who was working at that time with the Paris metro company, to create a metro line linking the neighbourhood or the new city to Cairo.

Heliopolis:

Heliopolis contains many exciting places, like Heliopolis Club, one of Egypt’s most luxurious sporting clubs. It was established along with Heliopolis in 1905. Also, it contained the Merryland, a well-known recreational park with its lake and was at the height of its elegance in the 1960s and 1970s. It now includes a small amusement park and other sporting clubs, such as El Shams Club, which is the biggest in size and number of members. There was Luna Park, Africa’s first amusement park, and the grounds were converted into an Australian field hospital just after the onset of World War I.

Heliopolis has been critical in Egypt in the last few years, as the Egyptian Military and Air Force headquarters are located there. The Almaza Military Airbase is also very close to Heliopolis. The regional headquarters of some international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Red Crescent, are in Heliopolis.

Heliopolis was where the former president of Egypt, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, resided. In 1981, the site of the Heliopolis Palace Hotel became the Egyptian Republican Palace and the president’s office. Also, it contained a tram system that served Heliopolis and its surrounding areas. Still, it was closed, and some parts were removed in 2015 due to the new underground system that connected it with other critical residential regions around Cairo. Metro stations were built in several significant areas of Heliopolis, such as El-Ahram Street and El-Marghany Street, with a plan to extend the line to include other stations, including Nozha and Cairo International Airport. The Heliopolis/Airport extensions of Line 3 are expected to be completed by the end of 2018.

One of the well-known landmarks in Heliopolis is the Catholic Basilica church on Al-Ahram Street, which is also the burial place of Baron Empain himself. The location also includes many places of worship, including numerous mosques, Saint Mark’s Church on Cleopatra Street, and Saint George’s Church in Heliopolis Square.

Heliopolis was merely a barren desert before the Baron Empain Palace was built until Empain presented to the Egyptian government the idea of establishing a neighbourhood in the desert east of Cairo and chose the name “Heliopolis”, meaning the city of the sun.

Due to the Baron Palace, a famous landmark of curiosity, legend, and Egyptian history, Heliopolis became a well-known suburb and an elite district of Cairo.

Heliopolis was established in 1905. It is considered one of the more affluent areas of Cairo. Aside from the Baron Palace, one of the famous places in Heliopolis is the Heliopolis War Cemetery on Nabil el Wakkad Street. This cemetery contains the Port Tewfik Memorial, a memorial to over 4000 soldiers of the British Indian Army who fell in World War I, which was initially in Port Tawfiq but was later moved to Heliopolis after its demolition in the 1970s. After the 1952 revolution, it became home to much of Cairo’s educated middle class. As Cairo expanded over the decades, the once vast distance between Heliopolis and Cairo vanished and is now well within the city’s borders. Because of the significant increase in the population, the original gardens that filled the city have mostly been built over.

The Egyptian government bought Baron Empain’s Palace in 2005, but it has remained closed. Many hoped the government would repair the palace, but it stayed closed without explanation. The building was home to stray dogs and thousands of bats, although there have been reports of satanic rituals taking place at night, which made people afraid to come near it.

To reach the palace, visitors had to walk through lush terraces, each with its exotic statues, amid colourful vegetation. The exterior is covered with sculptures of Hindu deities, mythical creatures, and elephants.

The interior became bare but was once ornamented with frescoes, gilded doors, and Belgian mirrors designed by Georges-Louis Claude. However, they were looted long ago. Beneath the palace is an underground.

The palace’s central tower, where Empain had his rooms, is said to have been built on a revolving base to allow a 360-degree view and constant sunlight.

The architectural beauty of Empain’s Palace starkly contrasts his tragic personal life. Distraught by her husband’s affairs, Baron Empain’s wife Helena eventually fell to her death from the revolving tower. Psychological problems plagued the couple’s daughter, Merriam, who would sit for hours in one of the basement rooms when she was in a bad mood. It was this chamber in which she, too, was found dead just a few years after her mother’s death. Although the Baron was plagued with his health problems, having to walk with a limp and suffering from epilepsy, which led him to succumb to regular seizures in the gardens of his palace, he returned to Belgium during the outbreak of World War I and survived until 1929. Baron Empain’s son lived in the palace after his father’s death but sold the estate at the outbreak of the 1952 revolution.

The Reopening and Restoration of the Baron Empain Palace:

Finally, after being closed for two years for restoration that cost about 100 million Egyptian pounds (about 6 million dollars), the Palace of Baron Empain in Heliopolis has regained its former glory and was officially inaugurated by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sision the anniversary of the 30 June Revolution, as a tourist destination and a venue for exhibitions on the history of Heliopolis and restored life to one of the most distinguished archaeological sites in Heliopolis. The Armed Forces Engineering Authority was carrying out the restoration.

The project consisted of reinforcing the ceilings, restoring the marble columns and frescoes above the main entrance and decorative elements like statues and sculptures, and shoring up doors and windows.

The tour of the palace takes 45 minutes, and the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry has set a limit of 900 tickets, or 100 visitors a day, until mid-July, after which the limit will be 700 visitors, and visiting times will be from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. The fee of the entry ticket is priced to be affordable to almost everyone, that being L.E 100 for foreign visitors, L.E 50 for international students, L.E 20 for Egyptians, and L.E 10 for Egyptian students. All elderly Egyptian visitors 60+ years old will be exempted from the entry fee.

The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, in cooperation with the Belgian Embassy in Egypt and the civil society associations, has turned the palace into an archaeological gallery to retell the history of the Heliopolis district. Some work has been added to the site, such as completing the fences and developing the rear garden. The exhibition inside the palace tells the history of the Heliopolis neighbourhood through various photos, archival documents and illustrations, maps and unique correspondence letters depicting the history of the Heliopolis district in different eras.