Mahmoud Said Museum

A small but excellent museum dedicated to Mahmoud Said and a small group of his contemporaries — Mohamed Naghi, Adham and Seif Wanly, and a few others. The villa is itself worth the visit: a 1920s Italian-style house with original tiled floors, a small garden, and high airy rooms.

The collection includes around 60 paintings by Said himself plus works by the contemporaries he influenced. The labels are in Arabic with brief English summaries; allow 90 minutes. The museum sits in the upper-middle-class Gianaclis neighbourhood, about 5 km east of the city centre, easily reached by taxi. Closed Mondays.

things to do museum
A story
Mahmoud Said (1897–1964) was the most important modern Egyptian painter — and an unusual figure: a judge by profession, painter by vocation, deeply familiar with European modernism but committed to depicting Egyptian working-class subjects in a frankly sensuous, semi-academic style. His 'Whirling Dervishes' and the various paintings of fellaha (peasant women) define what Egyptian modernism looked like in the 1930s and 40s. The museum is in his former family villa in the Gianaclis neighbourhood.