Egypt’s Belle Epoque was a period of incredible extravagance during which Khedive Ismail’s Cairo became the mirror image of decadent Paris. The glamour and hedonism of the era reached its peak with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Kings and emperors, artists, writers, and Europe’s most sophisticated flocked to the dazzling new Cairo of sumptuous palaces and Parisian gardens. Only a year after the Suez Canal opened, the Second Empire in France collapsed and the khedive’s excesses plunged Egypt into crippling debt. Ismail was eventually forced to abdicate, leaving Cairo to the British who occupied Egypt in all but name.
