The last pyramid still standing in a city of 20 million
The largest city in the Arab world, sprawling along the Nile within sight of the Giza pyramids — Egypt's national dish koshary (rice, lentils, pasta, and crispy fried onions) was born here from the same multicultural trade crossroads that built everything else about the city.
Cairo rose to prominence as a Fatimid capital in 969 CE, became one of the medieval Islamic world's great centers of learning, and absorbed waves of Ottoman, then British, influence before Egyptian independence in 1952. The Giza pyramids, just outside the modern city, were already over 2,500 years old by the time Cairo itself was founded.