MARRIOTT BUZZ NO. 13 - 2018

8 H I S T O R Y The Al Gezira Palace was partly fashioned after the Alhambra fortress of Granada, where the Canal inauguration’s guest of honor, Empress Eugenie of France, had her Spanish origins. It was also modeled in part after her royal residence, the magnificent Palais des Tuileries in France, with its distinctive renaissance style. The Khedive ensured that the palace would exude a noticeable Moorish-Spanish Islamic influence which came to be embodied in the characteristic towering brown and beige palm archways accompanied by ornate mashrabiya and marble work. The Palace would come to exhibit what was a decidedly unique and pioneering combination of architectural styles that meshed together in a symphony of seamless and unprecedented beauty. The palatial gardens were a separate marvel in their own right, inspired by the associated Jardins des Tuileries. Leading Parisian landscape artist at the time, Jean Pierre Barillet-Des Champs, was tasked with creating an unparalleled lush landscaping of greenery and floral blush that were befitting of the sophistication of the palatial architecture, which emerged as an extraordinary semi-tropical garden of Eden right in the heart of Cairo. ​ The Mena House would exchange ownership in foreign hands several times, before English couple and seasonal vacationers in Egypt Hugh and Ethel Locke-King acquired the property. It was then that Mrs. Locke-King, with the architectural purview of Frenchman Henri Favager (whom she hired), would transform the grounds into a luxury hotel of the highest order. The Mena House did not take long to become a favored rendezvous of Europe’s high society, and the hotel came to encompass a variety of refined recreational activities such as golf, croquet, lawn tennis and shooting as well as other novel amenities like electric tramways that went to and from the hotel, a photography darkroom, billiards hall and artist’s studio. Like the Gezira Palace, the Mena House also enjoyed a special prominence to Egypt and the wider world. During the First World War it served as a general hospital and barracks, whilst during the Second World War it became memorialized as the famous meeting point, where Churchill and Roosevelt met for the Cairo Conference in 1943, and afterwards as a site for Palestinian-Israeli peace settlements. The revival of Moorish Spain in a unique style of execution was the brainchild of German architect Carl Von Diebitsch, who had spent six months in Granada studying the Alhambra’s storied architectural composition. Von Diebitsch did not simply replicate stylistically, instead he devised a revolutionary style. He was obsessed with oriental design and it was in part due to his studious and thoroughly meticulous nature accompanied by a boldly imaginative vision that ordained Al Gezira Palace with its vaunted place amongst Egypt’s, and indeed the world’s, modern palatial wonders. Similarly, throughout his work on the Mena House, Favager’s distinguished architectural expertise was a deferential nod to the splendor of the Islamic architecture of Old Cairo. Favager implemented the main façade of the hotel as a composition of irregular sections of varying heights, recessed and jutting, each with terraces. He also ensured the palace’s unparalleled view of the Pyramids was given its due glory with an expansive front terrace that was composed entirely of wood and with a majestic Arabesque style. ​The tales of these two palaces recount a deep interconnectedness on a variety of levels; for their conception spurred by the inauguration of the Suez