Heliopolis (Cairo suburb)

Heliopolis (Egyptian Arabic: مصر الجديدة‎‎, Maṣr El Gedīdah, [ˈmɑsˤɾ el ɡɪˈdidæ], lit. "New Egypt") was a suburb outside Cairo, Egypt, which has since merged with Cairo as a district of the city and is one of the more affluent areas of Cairo. It was established in 1905 by the Heliopolis Oasis Company headed by the Belgian industrialist Baron Empain and by Boghos Nubar, son of the Egyptian Prime Minister Nubar Pasha. It is the location of the Cairo International Airport.

Baron Empain, a well-known amateur Egyptologist and prominent Belgian entrepreneur, arrived in Egypt in January 1904, intending to rescue one of his Belgian wife's development projects: the construction of a railway line linking Al-Matariyyah to Port Said. Despite losing the railway contract to the British, Empain stayed on in Egypt.

In 1905, Empain established the Cairo Electric Railways and Heliopolis Oases Company, which bought a large stretch of desert some distance to the northeast of Cairo at a low price from the colonial government. His efforts culminated in 1907 with the building of the new town of Heliopolis, in the Sahara desert ten kilometers from the center of Cairo. The new city represented the first large-scale attempt to promote its own architecture, known now as the Heliopolis style. It was designed as a "city of luxury and leisure", with broad avenues and equipped with all conveniences and infrastructure: water, drains, electricity, hotel facilities, such as the Heliopolis Palace Hotel and Heliopolis House, and recreational amenities including a golf course, racetrack and park. In addition, there was housing for rent, offered in a range of innovative designs targeting specific social classes with detached and terraced villas, apartment buildings, tenement blocks with balcony access and workers' bungalows.

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