Cairo Tourism Guide is an independent reference for people planning a trip to Cairo. It exists because most of what is written about the city online falls into two camps: listicles that recycle the same eight attractions, and tour operator pages that are selling something. Neither tells you that the Grand Egyptian Museum needs most of a day, that the Giza ticket queue behaves differently before nine in the morning, or what a taxi from the airport should actually cost this month.
Why this site exists
Cairo is a difficult city to research from a distance. It is enormous, it is genuinely chaotic in ways that reward preparation, and a great deal of the practical information circulating about it is years out of date. Ticket prices at the antiquities sites are revised regularly. The Egyptian pound has moved sharply against major currencies, which quietly invalidates every budget figure published before it. Museum collections have been physically relocated across the city. A guide written in 2019 can be confidently, comprehensively wrong.
This site is an attempt to keep one thorough, current, non-commercial account of the city in one place.
What is covered
There are over 130 guides here, published since April 2026 and organised into twelve sections. Each section is built around a long overview guide with more specific articles beneath it:
- The Pyramids of Giza — tickets, timing, the interior chambers, the Sphinx, and how to get there without being handled by touts.
- Museums and cultural attractions — the Grand Egyptian Museum, the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir, the Coptic and Islamic collections, and Old Cairo.
- Food and dining — koshari, ful and taameya, the restaurants worth booking, and how street food actually works here.
- Where to stay — Zamalek, Downtown, Garden City, Maadi, Giza and the airport strip, and what each trades away.
- Getting around — the metro, ride-hailing, white taxis, and the river bus.
- The Nile — feluccas, dinner cruises, the Corniche, and Gezira and Zamalek island.
- Day trips — Saqqara, Dahshur, Memphis, Alexandria, Fayoum and the long haul to Luxor.
- Shopping — Khan el-Khalili, cotton and textiles, papyrus, and what is worth carrying home.
- Budget and money — realistic daily costs, exchange, cards, ATMs and baksheesh.
- Culture and etiquette — dress, Ramadan, mosque visits, photography, and useful Arabic.
- Things to do and a general Cairo travel guide covering visas, seasons, safety and itineraries.
How the guides are researched
Anything factual and checkable is traced back to a primary source and linked so you can check it yourself. In practice that means the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities for site hours and ticketing, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre for the listed sites, the Central Bank of Egypt for currency, Egypt’s official e-visa portal for entry requirements, and the UK Foreign Office and US State Department for travel advisories. Health guidance follows the CDC and WHO rather than anecdote.
Where a claim cannot be sourced — how long a queue tends to run, whether a neighbourhood is walkable after dark, which stalls in Khan el-Khalili sell the same thing at four different prices — it is written as judgement, not as fact, and framed that way in the text.
What changes fast, and how that is handled
Three things in Cairo go stale faster than anything else: prices quoted in Egyptian pounds, opening hours at the antiquities sites, and anything to do with the Grand Egyptian Museum. Prices here are given in pounds with an approximate conversion and a date, so you can tell how old the figure is rather than trusting it blindly. Where a detail is genuinely in flux, the guide says so instead of guessing.
Guides are revisited rather than left to rot. If you find something that has moved on, telling us is the fastest way to get it fixed.
What this site does not do
- It has no connection to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the Egyptian Tourism Authority, or any government body. Nothing here is official.
- It does not sell tours, tickets, accommodation or transfers, and it cannot book anything on your behalf. Some booking links here do earn a commission if you book through them, which is set out on the affiliate disclosure page.
- Hotels, restaurants and operators are named because they are worth knowing about. No one has paid to appear, and no one can.
- It is not a booking service or a travel agency, and it cannot arrange anything on your behalf.
How this site is funded
We work with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network whose script turns links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking links as the page loads and can add booking boxes of its own. When you follow one of those links and make a booking, the booking company pays us a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way.
Nothing on this site is a paid placement. We are not paid to include a hotel, a restaurant or an attraction, and no partner sees an article before it is published. Where we recommend something, it is because we think it is worth your time.
Corrections
Prices move, museums reorganise, restaurants close. If something here is wrong or out of date, send it through the contact page — a specific correction with the page it appears on is more useful than a general note, and it will be checked and amended.