The Mahmoud Khalil Museum is one of Cairo's most unexpected cultural experiences — a French Impressionist art collection of significant quality housed in a belle époque villa on the Dokki corniche. Mahmoud Khalil was an Egyptian politician and collector who spent 30 years acquiring Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings; the museum holds works by Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others, along with Chinese jade, Japanese ivory, and European decorative arts.
The collection was assembled with genuine connoisseurship and is of a quality that would be remarkable in any museum. The villa itself — on the Nile, with a garden and Nile views — provides an ideal setting. It's largely unknown to non-Cairenes, which means it's rarely crowded. The Gogh's "Poppy Flowers" (stolen and recovered) is the most famous single work. Admission is modest.