Coptic Cairo: Babylon Fortress, Hanging Church, Abu Serga, Coptic Museum & Ben Ezra

Long before the Fatimids founded walled Al-Qāhirah in 969 CE, the strategic settlement at the head of the Nile Delta was the Roman river fortress of Babylon (Qasr al-Sham'a). Located five kilometres south of Tahrir Square directly outside Mar Girgis Station on Cairo Metro Line 1, this quiet, car-free enclave of sunken stone lanes, known today as Coptic Cairo (Misr al-Qadima), brings together Egypt's earliest Christian churches, a historic synagogue, and the first mosque built on the African continent.

1. The Roman Fortress of Babylon (c. 300 CE) & the Hanging Church (Al-Mu'allaqa)

• Emperor Diocletian's Red-Brick-and-Limestone Bastions: Guarding the mouth of the ancient canal that linked the Nile to the Red Sea and rebuilt around 300 CE under Roman Emperor Diocletian, the massive round towers of the Fortress of Babylon still drop six metres below modern street level to the old Roman river quay.
• The Hanging Church (Saint Virgin Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church): Ascending twenty-nine marble steps from the palm-lined courtyard brings you into Al-Kanisa al-Mu'allaqa ("The Suspended Church"), built directly across the wooden-beamed roof of the Roman fortress's southern gatehouse towers (look down through the glass floor panels inside the nave to see the Roman stones below). Serving as the official seat of the Coptic Orthodox Pope from 1047 to 1300, the church is famed for its barrel-vaulted timber roof shaped like Noah's Ark, its eleventh-century marble pulpit supported by thirteen slender columns, its thirteenth-century cedar sanctuary screens inlaid with carved ivory and ebony crosses, and over a hundred historic icons.

2. Church of Abu Serga, Coptic Museum (1910), Ben Ezra Synagogue & 'Amr ibn al-'As Mosque

• Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Abu Serga, 4th to 5th Century): Descending into the sunken alleys behind the Coptic Museum leads to Abu Serga, the oldest church in Coptic Cairo. Steps beneath the choir lead down to a fourth-century vaulted stone Crypt where Coptic tradition holds that the Holy Family (Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus) rested during their stay in Egypt.
• The Coptic Museum (Founded 1908, Opened 1910): Established by Marcus Simaika Pasha in gardens between the Roman walls, the twenty-six galleries of the Coptic Museum display over 16,000 works showing the transition from Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman Egypt to Christianity, including fourth-century limestone reliefs, colourful monastic frescoes from Bawit and Saqqara, Coptic textiles, the fourth-century Nag Hammadi Gnostic papyrus codices, and the earliest complete Psalms of David codex.
• Ben Ezra Synagogue & the 641 CE Mosque of 'Amr ibn al-'As: At the end of the lane stands the Ben Ezra Synagogue (rebuilt in the 1890s on ninth-century foundations), where the famous Cairo Geniza cache of 300,000 medieval Jewish manuscripts was preserved. Five minutes' walk north outside the fortress gate rises the colonnaded Mosque of 'Amr ibn al-'As, founded in 641 to 642 CE as the spiritual heart of Fustat.