Marriott Mena House, Cairo

The Great Pyramid fills the window. Marriott Mena House, Cairo, at the end of Pyramids Road in Giza, is the only hotel built in the shadow of the pyramids rather than at a distance from them, and it has been there since 1886. The gardens cover 40 acres, and the oldest wing was a khedive's lodge before the first tourist slept in it.

History

Khedive Ismail built a hunting lodge on the site in 1869, the year the Suez Canal opened. In 1883 an English couple, Frederick and Jessie Head, bought the lodge as a private house, and in 1885 they sold it to Hugh and Ethel Locke King, who extended it and opened it as a hotel in 1886. The Locke Kings named it Mena House after Menes, the first pharaoh of a united Egypt. Egypt's first hotel swimming pool was dug in the gardens in 1890. The Cairo Conference of November 1943 met in the hotel, with Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek staying in the grounds. Oberoi Hotels managed the house from 1972 to 2012; after a renovation under state ownership it reopened in 2018 under Marriott's management, as Marriott Mena House, Cairo.

Architecture and design

The original Palace wing is a late-nineteenth-century building in the Islamic revival manner, with mashrabiya screens, carved wooden ceilings, mosaic floors and brass lamps. Much of the decoration was assembled from older Cairo houses when the hotel was being enlarged. Garden wings were added in the twentieth century. The restoration completed in 2018 kept the Palace wing's public rooms and reorganised the rooms in the newer wings. The gardens run down from the hotel to the edge of the plateau, with lawns, palms and jacarandas, and the pool sits among them.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 331 rooms and suites. The Palace wing holds the heritage rooms, with high ceilings, arches and balconies that face the pyramids; the garden wings have larger modern rooms and suites, many also facing the pyramids over the lawns. The top suites in the Palace wing, among them the Churchill Suite and the Montgomery Suite, carry the names of past guests.

Dining

139 Pavilion, the all-day restaurant, has a terrace facing the Great Pyramid and takes its name from the pyramid's present height in metres. Alfredo serves Italian food. The Sultan Lounge in the Palace wing serves tea and drinks under the old carved ceiling. The Moghul Room, an Indian restaurant from the Oberoi years, was a fixture of the old hotel.

Wellness

The spa has treatment rooms, a sauna and steam rooms, and the outdoor pool in the gardens, heated in winter, looks straight at the pyramids. The hotel kept a golf course in the grounds for most of the twentieth century.

Weddings and events

The lawns facing the pyramids take wedding receptions of several hundred guests, and the hotel is among the most photographed wedding settings in Egypt. Indoors, a ballroom and a set of meeting rooms serve conferences, and the Palace wing's salons take smaller dinners. The restoration added a conference centre on the garden side of the hotel.

Location

The hotel stands at the western end of Pyramids Road, at the entrance to the Giza plateau; the ticket gate to the pyramids is a few hundred metres away. The Grand Egyptian Museum lies 2 kilometres to the north. Cairo International Airport is about 45 kilometres away, a drive of an hour or more depending on traffic; the centre of Cairo is 20 kilometres east. As a luxury hotel in Giza, it is the one address from which the pyramids are visible from bed.