Culture activist
Sally Soliman spoke on her twitter account about what happening and is happening to
Mohamed Ali Palace in
Shubra El Kheima and it is not good.
First of all Mohamed Ali Palace in Shubra is one of the most oldest and beautiful palaces remaining from Mohamed Ali Era itself. Mohamed Ali Pasha ordered its construction in 1808. The construction of that palace finished in 1812.
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| A painting showing the palace during the day of the Pasha |
The Palace is built like the Palaces in Istanbul , extremely beautiful.
It was neglected for years yet in 2000 the minister of culture then Farouk Hosni suddenly remembered. Not less than LE50 millions were allocated then for the restoration works in the neglect palace. About 14 experts in the restorations of palaces from Italy and France were brought in to help in its restoration.
In 2005 it was
re-inaugurated by Mubarak in a very big celebration. Of course since then we knew that the palace was being rented for big galas , parties and weddings especially for the VIPs like former NDP leading member and policy maker Mohammed Kamel
"He is still in the scene and last thing I know about him was being an adviser to Ahmed Shafik." Now Soliman shocked us and told us online that part of the palace is collapsing.
Part of the Palace ,
one of its dooms collapsed in 2012 and nobody paid attention as usual. Al Ahram Daily published
a report then with a picture and nobody moved a muscle. Yes I know we are in transitional period , difficult and soon on but this will be not forever the case.
It seems that the was corruption as usual in the restoration works. In 2010
Al Masry Al Youm published a report with a video about the neglect in the palace and how the paint used in the restoration works began to collapse after only 5 years of the restoration work. Sally Soliman raised important matter. If you remember I wrote once
that old original paintings were stolen in 2009 from the palace and suddenly
resurfaced in matter of days in some mystery. Up till now we do not know who stole those paintings and why they were returned and more important : Where the paintings are now !?
Allegedly they are in some warehouse.
Another thing she says during the restoration works there were rumors that the original crystal chandeliers from Beligum and Italy were being replaced by Egyptian ones.
Here is a slide show with photos from the beautiful palace that can bring to Egypt a lot of cash if you treat it like the Turks and their palaces. If the history talk does not work , the money talk does.
Below the series of Soliman's tweets in Arabic.
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