Al Montaza: The Story of Two Alexandria Palaces and Their Surrounding Gardens
By Kenzy Fahmy
Alexandria is a city with so much history and so many layers that one can easily get lost in it all. For millennia, the port city has drawn some of the world’s greatest minds from far and wide to her shores. Up until a few decades ago, Alexandria was one of Egypt’s most diverse cities, with vibrant Jewish, Greek, English and Italian communities, and a cultural scene that rivaled those of Europe at the time.
Over the years, the face (and faces) of the city has changed, in some cases quite drastically, and much of what used to be has disappeared. But there are still many things that remain, acting as an anchor to the city’s incredibly rich history and heritage. One of those anchors is Montaza, a gorgeously green complex of gardens and palaces that stretch out over several beautiful bays and an icon of Alexandria’s cityscape.
Montaza was built in the late 1800s by Khedive Abbas Hilmy II, Egypt’s ruler from 1892 to 1914, as a hunting lodge and summer getaway. Story goes that Abbas, the last of the Khedives to rule over Egypt and Sudan, stumbled upon the location on an evening moonlit donkey ride, with accompanying musicians and entertainment, past the then Queen Mother’s summer palace, Saray el-Hazina (the Palace of Sorrows) in al-Raml, where he found a vast and deserted strip of sandy coastline. Abbas was apparently so enamoured by the picturesque landscape that he decided to build his hunting lodge there, just outside the existing boundaries of the city.
Designed by Greek-born architect Dimitri Fabricius Pasha, who at the time served as court engineer and Director of Khedivial Palaces, the hunting lodge and summer palace was given the name Salamlek. It became a haven for the Khedive and his friends, including his Austro-Hungarian mistress, Countess May von Torok, who he eventually married, and later divorced.
But it was Haramlek Palace, built in the 1920s by King Fouad, that really put Montaza on the map and became a key cultural landmark of Alexandria. Fouad commissioned Italian architect Ernesto Verruci to design the iconic building which was to serve as the royal family’s summer residence. With a mix of Florentine and Turkish architecture, the palace is a stunning example of some of the influences that drove design in Egypt, from remnants of Ottoman rule to the flourishing Italian community that lived in the country at the time.
The palaces and grounds were, of course, closed off to the public at the time, and it wasn’t until the 1952 revolution when the complex was seized by the Egyptian government that Montaza was opened up to outside visitors.
Since then, Montaza has gone through many changes, from the transformation of the gardens into a park, Salamlek Palace into a hotel and Haramlek into a museum, to the development of small cabins along the beaches and bays for Egyptians to use during the summer months. At some point, Haramlek was even converted into a casino, although this was short-lived.
Anwar el Sadat famously enjoyed spending his summers there, at his cabin perched high on a cliff with breathtaking views of the surrounding bays. The cabin remains till this day, the wind and sea slowly eating away at its foundation, leaving in their wake fascinating ruins and fragments of a history burned into so many of our memories.
Montaza has always been, and always will be, a pillar of Alexandria’s identity, regardless of its evolution. It is, until today, one of the city’s largest and most important green spaces, and the two palaces will forever serve as beautiful relics of a time when the city was considered by all to be the jewel of the Mediterranean.