2023

The Qasr Al-Nil bridge finally protected

Witness of a glorious time in the history of Egypt, the Qasr Al-Nil bridge, decorated with the famous four lions, will finally be preserved and protected. Protection that comes through its inscription as a contemporary monument by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, which must clean it, restore and consolidate it in order to preserve it. The bridge is in fact the first viaduct built on the Nile to link east and west of Cairo (Cairo to Giza). It all starts with the celebrations for the inauguration of the Suez Canal.

The Khedive Ismail decided to make the Egyptian capital, Cairo, the Paris of the Orient. So he built Ismaili Square (now Tahrir Square). To the west, he built several palaces and seraglio. The first was the Gezira Palace, which is the former pavilion of today's Marriott Hotel, built to house the French Empress Eugenie.

There was also the Giza Palace, whose garden was later transformed into a zoo. Two other seraglio palaces, dedicated to the sons of the khedive, were also built. They occupied what is now the Faculty of Applied Arts, not to mention the land that Princess Fatma, daughter of the Khedive Ismail Pasha, donated to help build the National University, the future University of Fouad I (now Cairo University). It was against this backdrop that the Qasr Al-Nil Bridge was built.

It was in 1869 that Khedive Ismaïl Pasha gave the order to build the bridge. ‘At a cost of 2.75 million francs at the time, the French engineer Pierre-Félix Moreaux, of the Fives-Lille company, built the bridge to plans by Linant de Bellefonds, then chief engineer of public works in Egypt. The work was completed in 1871,’ explains archaeologist Ayman Fouad Saïd. But the inauguration took place a year later, in 1872, after its solidity had been examined.

As part of the tests, ‘an artillery team consisting of 6 cannons passed over the bridge, which remained stable’, the archaeologist points out. The bridge can also be opened at certain times of the day to allow boats to continue sailing.

According to archaeologists, a metal bridge was urgently needed at the time. Before this bridge, people, animals and food were transported from Gezira Island to Cairo and vice versa via a floating bridge installed by the French army during the Egyptian Expedition (1799-1801). But accidents were common, causing a large number of casualties. So the bridge was built to link Ismaili Square to the Gezira Palace (now the Marriott Hotel).