The mirage of Heliopolis

Abstract

Heliopolis is a neighborhood encompassed in the city of Cairo since the late 1950s. Originally it was a city built by a Belgian tycoon in the middle of the desert, where there was little more than the memory of a site of high antiquity. It recently suffered from a recrudescence of speculation and from the erection of new roads that will link Cairo with the future Egyptian capital, disfiguring its current urban layout. At the same time, recent academic studies tend to denounce its colonialist past, with the risk of further devaluing a threatened heritage. Therefore, in the present paper, we will wonder to what extent colonialist models of cities founded at the beginning of the 20th century may include the Heliopolis experience. We propose to qualify this approach by contrasting it with the conditions of which Heliopolis has been erected, and by framing it both in the history of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, and we will highlight its enriching elements as well as its uniqueness