The single best way to experience Heliopolis is to walk its main boulevards — Ibrahim al-Lakkani, al-Ahrar, and the streets radiating out from the Baron Palace. Empain's planners laid these out wide, with arcaded ground floors designed to provide shade, and the buildings above them range from Moorish revival to Art Nouveau to early modernism. Look for the wrought-iron balconies on the older villas, the carved stucco details above archways, the occasional glimpse of a large garden behind a wall. The neighbourhood has been filled in and built up since Empain's day, but enough of the original fabric survives to give a strong sense of what it once was. A leisurely circuit from Baron Palace to the Basilica and back covers about two kilometres and takes as long as you care to make it.