Tahrir Square — Liberation Square — is the symbolic centre of Cairo, a broad, traffic-choked roundabout in the middle of downtown that gained global significance during the 2011 revolution, when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians camped here for 18 days and brought down a 30-year dictatorship.
In normal times the square is functional rather than beautiful: a large central garden ringed by multiple lanes of swirling traffic, flanked by the Egyptian Museum on the north, the Mogamma government building to the south, and the Arab League headquarters to the west. The pedestrian underpasses that connect the square's sections are worth using — the traffic is impassable on foot above ground.
The Egyptian Museum faces the square directly, making it the natural anchor of a visit to downtown Cairo. The museum's pink neoclassical exterior, built in 1902, is one of the few colonial-era buildings left intact in this part of the city.