In 1869, Khedive Ismail built the Mena House Hotel in front of the Pyramids of Giza, and the reason behind this was his desire to have a break of his own in which he would spend his time after returning from long fishing trips and meet his guests there. Khedive Ismail expanded the rest area and prepared the Haram Street leading to it, and transformed the building into a palace for the guests of the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal.
“The Seventh Day” monitors x 7 photos from the account of “Old Zaman”, the Khedive’s resting place, which was then turned into a hotel. In 1883, the debts of Khedive Ismail increased, so his son, Khedive Tawfiq, was forced to sell the palace to a wealthy British man and his wife, Frederick and Jesse Head, and the palace became a residence. Especially for them, they spent their honeymoon and expanded its building and named it Mina in relation to King Mina, the pharaonic king who united the two countries.
In 1885 they sold the palace to an Englishman and his wife, “Ethel and Hughes Locke King”, a family famous for their love for ancient Egyptian antiquities, and decided to convert the palace into the Mena House Hotel, which was opened to the public in 1886. During the First World War, the hotel became the headquarters of the Australian and New Zealand forces and then turned into a hospital at the end of that war, and during the Second World War in 1943.
After that, the ownership of the hotel was transferred from the “Locke” family to the Egyptian Hotel Company, which owned historical hotels such as “Shepherd” and “Al Jazeera Palace”, and with the outbreak of the July 23 revolution in 1952, the hotel was nationalized and its ownership returned to the Egyptian government. In 1971, the hotel was bought by Ray Bahadur Mohan Singh and his company, who are the current owners of the Mena House Oberoi Hotel, and in 1972 the Indian International Oberoi Hotels Company took over the management of the hotel and renovated it more than once.
The hotel started with 80 distinctive rooms and suites, and in 1920 another 30 rooms were added to the hotel, and in 1964 the hotel was purchased by the Oberoi Group and began to renovate it in 1972 and ended in 1975, then in 1978 work began in the gardens wing, where 200 were added New room, and in 2007 and 2008 the hotel was renewed again and the number of hotel rooms reached 486 rooms and suites (7 junior suites and 4 master suites, each with a spacious private balcony overlooking the pyramids).
Among the most famous personalities who stayed in Mina House were Eugenie, Empress of France, Prince Albert Victor, Prince of Wales, Winston Churchill, King Farouk, Queen Nazli, US President Richard Nixon, King Gustav of Sweden, King Umberto of Italy, Alfonso of Spain, King Mohammed V of Morocco and others.
