Cairo Marriott Hotel

The Cairo Marriott Hotel is a large hotel located in the Zamalek district on Gezira Island, situated on the Nile, and just west of Downtown Cairo, Egypt. The central section was once the Gezirah Palace built for the Khedive Isma'il Pasha in 1869. The Palace and site was converted to a hotel by Marriott International into a modern hotel. The Cairo Marriott Hotel is one of the tallest buildings in Cairo.HotelThe hotel consists of 1,087 rooms, making it one of the largest hotels in the Middle East. The rooms are located in two identical twenty-storey buildings - the Gezira and Zamelek Towers. Situated between them on ground level is the palace and main entrance to the hotel, which reconstructed now contains the reception and administration areas. On the roof of the palace is an open-air theatre which faces the Nile and central Cairo.HistoryThe original Gezirah Palace was constructed by the Nile on orders from Khedive Ismail. He asked the architects of that time to make it resemble another palace in France, Versailles, where Empress Eugénie used to stay. The purpose for that palace was to host the French Empress Eugénie who was invited along with her husband the French Emperor Napoleon III. The occasion of that invitation was the opening of the Suez Canal, which was a huge project at that time.