Why it looks like this

The tangled lanes of Islamic Cairo date from 969, when the Fatimids founded al-Qahira — 'the Victorious'. That medieval city of gates, mosques and covered markets still sits east of the centre, its street pattern little changed in a thousand years.

In the 1860s, Khedive Ismail, dazzled by Haussmann's Paris, built a European downtown of straight boulevards and roundabouts beside the old city. And because the Nile valley is narrow and full, modern Cairo leaps into the desert: planned satellite cities and a new capital rise on the plateau to the east.