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Downtown Cairo · Since 1984

Mashrabiya, brass lanterns, and the rooftop Downtown remembers.

A family hotel off Talaat Harb since 1984. Thirty rooms of arabesque wood and brass, chosen by our grandfather, and a rooftop ten floors above the city that Downtown has been climbing to for four decades.

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Lantern-lit lounge with mashrabiya screens and doors opening onto the rooftop terrace at sunset
The tenth floor — lounge doors opening onto the roof.
1984Opened by the family
10Floors, and a rooftop
30Rooms, 20–35 m²
2 minFrom Talaat Harb Street
Rooms

Rooms with room to spare.

Four room types, from a 20 m² single to a 35 m² junior suite — generous by Downtown standards, and every one a short walk up to the roof.

In every room

The largest of our four room types is the junior suite. Whichever you choose, the room comes with all of this.

  • High-speed internet
  • Air conditioning
  • Television with streaming
  • Mini bar
  • Kettle and tea-making
  • Hairdryer
  • Safe
  • Private shower and bathroom
  • 24-hour room service

The Odeon stay

Friendly people who will help make your stay full of culture, discovery and adventure.

  • Rooms30 in total
  • Check-in14:00
  • Check-out11:00
  • Room serviceAvailable
  • Airport transfersOn request
  • The rooftopOpen to guests and visitors
  • Rooftop access24 hours for hotel guests
The Rooftop

Ten floors up, Downtown at your feet.

The rooftop is not an amenity we added. It is a large part of what Odeon is. In the 1980s it became a Downtown meeting place for actors, writers, thinkers, poets, screenwriters, politicians and singers — the whole cross-section of Cairo's creative and public life.

The hotel has had its changing years. The roof never emptied. It is still one of the city's best-known rooftops, and today guests and visitors alike can come up and see for themselves.

Come early for the view. Stay late and, by around 10pm, you will start seeing the Downtown regulars arrive. It is the Egyptian way.

  • Breakfast & full menuServed through the day
  • Drinks & shishaShisha after sunset
  • Open to allGuests around the clock; visitors during service hours
A busy rooftop table at night under strings of lights and bunting
A full house on the roof at night.
An older man in a hat painting the Downtown view from the rooftop terrace
The view that inspired his next painting.
An oud player on the rooftop at night
Oud under the lights.
The glazed rooftop lounge, wooden chairs and tables with Downtown rooftops through the windows
The glazed lounge, for when the wind picks up.
Friends around a table of shisha pipes on the rooftop at dusk
Shisha at dusk.
A long table of friends having dinner on the rooftop at night
Dinner under the pergola.
The restoration brief
Old-world look. Modern comforts.

Since 2025 the restoration has been led by the third generation of the family — repairing what is here rather than replacing it, floor by floor, while the hotel stays open.

Nothing is being modernised away. The mashrabiya screens, the lanterns and the carved ceilings stay. What changes is everything you cannot see in the old photographs: the beds, the bathrooms, the air conditioning, the internet.

Guest corridor with wooden doors, a hanging lantern and an arched doorway into a room
A guest corridor.
Bathroom with a glass rain shower, patterned tiles and an arabesque-framed mirror
Arabesque mirror, new bathroom.
The restoration

A forty-year-old hotel, carefully taken apart and put back.

The family is restoring Odeon Palace floor by floor: the rooms and bathrooms first, then the public rooms, the bar and the rooftop — keeping the original wood, brass and mashrabiya, and renewing everything behind them.

Press, partnerships and enquiries: info@odeonpalacehotel.com

1984Opened, and family-run ever since
30Rooms across four room types
10Floors, the rooftop at the top
3Generations involved so far
Then and now

Still here, forty years on.

The family albums are the restoration plan. Room by room, we are working back towards the photographs — and old wood and brass take their time, so some of these rooms are still on their way.

ThenArchive photograph of a guest room with patterned curtains and a woven bedcover
NowThe same style of guest room today, with a carved wardrobe, brass lantern and new bedding

The rooms: same carved wardrobes, new beds and bathrooms.

ThenArchive photograph of the dining room with red chairs and white tablecloths
NowThe dining room today under its carved wooden ceiling, with the same red chairs

The dining room: the same chairs, the same ceiling.

ThenArchive photograph of the lounge doors with mashrabiya panels and brass planters
NowThe lounge doors today, mashrabiya panels restored, with plants either side

The lounge: mashrabiya doors, brass planters, unchanged.

ThenArchive photograph of the bar with arched mirrored shelves and turned-wood stools
NowThe bar today with the same arched shelves beneath a carved ceiling

The bar: the arched shelves are original.

ThenArchive photograph of the rooftop terrace, tables laid under a timber pergola
NowThe rooftop terrace today, tables under the same pergola with Downtown beyond

The roof: the pergola still runs the length of the terrace.

Restoration is ongoing. Treating the original wood and brass properly is slow work, and we would rather take the time than replace them.

Our story

It began with six floors and an idea.

Odeon Palace was not designed recently to look historic. It is one family's building, one grandfather's taste, and forty years of Downtown evenings — a hotel being carefully brought back to life rather than replaced.

Rooftop
Four floors, addedBuilt on top for the hotel, opened 1984
Six original floorsBought in the late 1970s, with their own apartment entrance
Archive photograph of the hotel entrance with its carved wooden façade and Arabic and English sign
The hotel's own entrance, from the family archive.
  1. Late 1970s

    A building, and a gap in the market

    Saad Farag buys a six-storey building in Downtown Cairo. He sees what the area is missing: a three-star hotel that is also chic — somewhere people actually want to spend the evening.

  2. The build

    Four floors, on top of six

    With his wife Mervat and her father, an engineer, he works out how to build four new floors on top of the existing building — and gives the hotel its own entrance, beside the door to the original apartments.

  3. 1984

    Odeon Palace opens

    Arabesque wood, brass lanterns, a good drinks list and a rooftop that fills with actors, musicians and artists. It becomes a Downtown fixture almost immediately.

  4. Today

    Bringing it back

    Saad passed away in the early nineties. Mervat — Mimi to her grandchildren — has run the hotel ever since, and still does at 85. Now her grandchildren are restoring it, repairing rather than modernising, until it looks the way it does in the old photographs.

Archive photograph of the lobby with mashrabiya doors, brass planters and a carved ceiling
The lobby, not long after opening.
Archive photograph of Mervat behind the hotel's reception desk
Mimi behind reception, in the early years.
Archive photograph of the rooftop terrace with wicker chairs under a timber pergola
The roof, when the pergola was new.
The people

Forty years. Some familiar faces.

The wood and the lanterns are not the only things that stayed. Some of the people who opened this hotel are still here, behind the same bar and in the same dining room.

ThenArchive photograph of the bar in the 1980s, guests on stools and the cashier behind the counter
NowIbrahim and Mr Samy at the bar today with May Farag, the founder's granddaughter

Ibrahim & Mr Samy

Cashier · Maître d'hôtel

In the old bar photograph, Ibrahim is the cashier on the far right. Mr Samy has been the maître d'hôtel since the beginning. Here they are today, with May Farag, Saad's granddaughter, who is working on the restoration.

ThenArchive photograph of the Saturday grill being served on the rooftop, chefs in whites beside the trolley
NowChef Bakr in the dining room today in his whites

Chef Bakr

Kitchen steward, 1984 · Head chef today

He started as a kitchen steward on day one and worked his way up to chef. On the right of the old photograph he is serving the Saturday grill on the rooftop — a tradition he keeps asking us to bring back.

ThenArchive photograph of Mervat behind the reception desk
NowMervat at the reception desk today with her granddaughter May

Mervat — "Mimi"

Owner since the nineties

Saad's wife took over the hotel after his early death and has run it ever since. At 85 she is still behind that desk most days: properly old school, and full of stories worth asking for.

The lobby with its star-shaped carved ceiling and brass lanterns
The lobby, lanterns lit.
Engraved brass ornament hanging on a plaster wall
Engraved brass, on plaster.
Green beer bottles and bottle caps on the wooden bar
Last round at the bar.
Two friends playing chess at a table in the hotel
A long game, a longer evening.
Rooftop at night with a large brass lantern and mashrabiya screens
The lobby after dark.
Close-up of turned-wood mashrabiya lattice, back-lit by lamps
Mashrabiya, lit from behind.
The dining room with red chairs under a carved wooden ceiling
Breakfast room, carved ceiling.
Your day

A day in Cairo, from Odeon.

Staying here does not put you near Downtown. It puts you inside it — one turn off Talaat Harb, with the whole quarter on foot.

  1. Morning

    Breakfast on the rooftop, with the city still cool. Then out into Downtown on foot.

  2. Late morning

    The old streets around Talaat Harb: Café Riche, Stephenson Pharmacy, Bajocchi Jewelers, Atef Silver, and the shopfronts and facades in between.

  3. Afternoon

    Onwards to Tahrir and the streets around it. The Egyptian Museum is fifteen minutes away on foot.

  4. Early evening

    Look in on Cinema Radio, revived directly behind the hotel, and the newer cultural spaces around it.

  5. Evening

    Koshary at Abou Tarek, around the corner. Then back upstairs for a drink.

  6. Late

    Shisha after sunset on the roof — and around 10pm, the Downtown regulars start arriving.

The rooftop lounge in the late afternoon, looking out over Downtown
Breakfast, and later a nightcap, ten floors up.
A guest corridor with a hanging lantern
And a short walk back to your room.
Memories

Everyone has an Odeon story.

Hardly a week goes by without someone telling us they spent their early twenties on this roof — and that they still come back.

One afternoon a woman came up with her daughter. Her father used to come here, she told us, long before he passed away. They wanted to sit a while, where he used to sit.

As told by the family

Have an Odeon story?

A first date, a band, a friend you miss, a night you still remember? We are collecting them for the restored hotel.

Tell us your story →
Visit

Off Talaat Harb, in the middle of it all.

6 Dr. Abdel Hamid Said Street, Downtown CairoNext to Odeon Cinema, one turn off Talaat Harb Street

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Check-in14:00
Check-out11:00
Downtown Cairo6 Dr. Abdel Hamid Said Street, Downtown Cairo
Open in Google Maps ↗
On foot from the hotel
Talaat Harb StreetAround the corner
Nasser metro station≈ 200 m
The Nile Corniche≈ 500 m
Tahrir SquareA short walk
The Egyptian Museum≈ 15 min
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