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Naguib Mahfouz Museum
Life and work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz
About
The museum honours Egypt's Nobel laureate in literature in the historic quarter that shaped his fiction, presenting his life, archive and library to readers and researchers.
The Naguib Mahfouz Museum opened in July 2019 in the takiyya of the Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dahab complex, built in 1774 beside Al-Azhar Mosque, close to the novelist's birthplace in Gamaliya. Across two floors and some 1,600 square metres it presents Mahfouz's medals and certificates, including the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, his personal belongings, papers and photographs, his personal library of more than a thousand books, his works in Arabic and in translation, a research library and a screening room. The collection was donated largely by his daughter and is managed by the Ministry of Culture's Cultural Development Fund.
Why this museum matters
Exhibo editorial
A narrow lane beside the main entrance of Al-Azhar, inside the Ottoman complex Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dahab built in 1774 — the neighbourhood where Naguib Mahfouz was born and where his novels keep returning. The museum opened in July 2019, thirteen years after his death, on two floors: his library of 1,091 books, translations of his work into dozens of languages, the Nobel medal, two pens given to him by Tawfiq al-Hakim, his glasses, a rosary, a piece of the Berlin Wall. Halls named after the novels. Then you step out and Gamaliya is still there, the way he wrote it. Few writers' museums sit inside their own fiction.
Visit
Hours, tickets, and directions for Naguib Mahfouz Museum.
Address
Abu al-Dahab Complex, Al-Azhar Street (beside Al-Azhar Mosque), Gamaliya, Cairo, Egypt
Opening hours
- Monday
- 09:00 – 17:00
- Tuesday
- Closed
- Wednesday
- 09:00 – 17:00
- Thursday
- 09:00 – 17:00
- Friday
- 09:00 – 17:00
- Saturday
- 09:00 – 17:00
- Sunday
- 09:00 – 17:00
Closed on Tuesdays.