Home to the world’s largest food court featuring 4,223 seats at its Oasis restaurants and entertainment building, Cairo serves as the capital city for the Arab Republic of Egypt.

The world’s largest capital located in a desert, Cairo is also Africa’s most populous city and the biggest in the Arab World.

Cairo’s nickname is “City of Thousand Minarets” recognizing its hundreds of ubiquitous mosques. A minaret is a tower that is part of or adjacent to a mosque. Another nickname for Egypt’s capital city is “Mother of the World” reflecting its deep history.

Constructed to moderate the Egyptian capital’s traffic jams, Cairo’s Tahya Misr Bridge was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the widest cable-stayed bridge on Earth.

Cairo was the site for another Guinness World Record for the longest table anywhere. The record-setting table was 10,465 feet 7 inches long (almost 2 miles or nearly 3.2 kilometers), and was used to serve an evening meal to 7,000 people on June 2, 2019.

The Great Pyramid of Giza located in Cairo is the sole out of the 7 ancient wonders of the world still in existence. Cairo’s biggest pyramid was built from two million blocks of stone and required over 20 years to complete.

Research website numbeo ranks Cairo in the bottom 5% compared to the 250 cities evaluated on its overall quality of life index at June 2020. Cairo scored poorly on index factors such as health care (bottom 2%), pollution (worst 3%), purchasing power (lowest 3%), traffic commute time (slowest 9%), safety (most dangerous 33%) and property price to income ratio (most expensive 33%).

From an international trade perspective, exports from Egypt totaled US$30.6 billion in 2019. Its most valuable exports are refined petroleum oils (15% of Egypt’s global total), gold (6.7%), crude petroleum oil (6.3%), petroleum gas (4.5%), nitrogenous fertilizers (3.8%), monitors and projectors (2.7%), and fresh or dried miscellaneous citrus fruit (2.4%) according to the International Trade Centre.

Capital Facts for Cairo, Egypt: Quick Reference

 

The revolution that resulted in Egypt’s status as a republic started on July 23, 1952. Egyptians celebrate Revolution Day each July 23 as a national public holiday.

The Greater Cairo metropolitan area includes the city of Cairo, New Cairo city, Giza, Shubra El-Kheima, 6th of October City and Obour City. The metropolitan population is 20.9 million people living over 6,667.1 square miles (17,267.6 square kilometers).

At the country level, Egypt’s land territory covers 384,345 square miles (995,450 square kilometers). The nation’s population was 102.5 million inhabitants as of July 2020.

Population density within the larger Greater Cairo metropolitan area averages 3,135 people per square mile (1,210 per square kilometer).

Zooming out to Egypt’s overall land boundaries, population density dilutes to an average 266 inhabitants per square mile (103 per square kilometer).