Heliopolis (Masr el-Gedida — "New Egypt") is Cairo's most architecturally distinctive suburb — a planned garden city built from 1906 by Belgian entrepreneur Édouard Empain on the desert plateau northeast of the city. The architecture is idiosyncratic and unlike anywhere else in Egypt: Moorish revival arcades, Venetian campaniles, Fatimid-style domes, and art deco buildings all appear within a few blocks of each other along wide tree-lined avenues. The result is eccentric and remarkable.
The neighbourhood is now firmly part of the urban fabric, known as an upper-middle-class residential district and the location of Cairo International Airport. The Basilica of Our Lady of Egypt, the Heliopolis Palace Hotel (now a presidential palace), and the surviving arcaded commercial streets of Ibrahim Laqqany give the best sense of Empain's original vision. The metro (Heliopolis line) connects it to downtown in about 35 minutes.