The three-star Windsor Hotel, conveniently located in down-town Cairo, is a unique institution, retaining vestiges of its various incarnations over the last 120 years. Although its rather faded grandeur and no frills rooms may not be to everyone's taste, it has charm, character and the personal touch that comes with a family-owned hotel.
But what makes the Windsor unique?
Walking through its doors is like stepping back in time, and one can almost sense the ghosts of those who frequented its rooms. At the turn of the 20th century the building housed the Turkish Baths of the Egyptian royal family. Then in the 1920s, the colonial British army used it as an Officers' Club until it became an annex to the celebrated and opulent Shepheards Hotel, headquarters of the British in the Near East. On January 26 1952, and as a prelude to the July Revolution that forced the British occupiers and Egyptian royal family out of the country, a rioting Cairo mob set fire to foreign businesses and interests. Although Shepheards Hotel was burnt to the ground, the Windsor escaped with minimal damage. After the Revolution, a Coptic family bought the Windsor and turned it into a hotel that became an important centre of cosmopolitan Cairo in the 1950s and 60s.
The Windsor has the ambience of an Agatha Christie-style mystery novel and the film set features of the 1942 movie 'Casablanca'. In fact it has featured in various local and overseas films such as 'The English Patient'. Michael Palin chose to stay there in 1991 while filming his BBC documentary 'Around the World in Eighty Days' during which he attempted to replicate the exploits of Phileas Fogg, a character in Jules Verne's classic novel. The hotel, with its high ceilings, has retained much of its quaint antique furniture and on the wall of the 1st floor dining room/restaurant is a fire-damaged painting, a reminder of Black Saturday in January 1952. It has a telephone switchboard left over from its days as an officers' club and its antiquated cage lift, supposedly the oldest in Egypt, is operated by hand. Above all, it is the eclectic bar that epitomizes the old-world charm of the Windsor.
As its name implies, the bar's tables, chairs and stools are made from barrels. Together with its rugs, large lounges, colonial partitions, evidence of a big-game hunting era on its walls, chandeliers, framed newspaper cuttings, stacked bookshelves and a broken guitar in one corner, it is one of the most atmospheric places in Cairo to go for a beer. It is also one of the friendliest with a mix of guests, tourists and intellectual Egyptians served by approachable and attentive staff.
Although the Windsor could do with some tender loving care, unlike many of the deluxe hotels, it provides what many travellers are looking for: something different.
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