Cairenes call their city Umm al-Dunya — the mother of the world — and after a day here you understand the swagger. No other city stacks the centuries so casually: a Pharaonic obelisk on one corner, a Fatimid minaret on the next, a Belle Époque façade crumbling above a koshari counter. Greater Cairo holds some twenty million people, and all of them seem to be on Tahrir Square at once. The trick is to stop fighting the density and start reading it neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

Islamic Cairo is the medieval core, and Al-Muizz Street is the spine to walk it — a floodlit corridor of mosques, sabils and madrasas that runs down to Khan el-Khalili, the coppersmiths' bazaar that has been trading since the 14th century. South lies Coptic Cairo, where the Hanging Church sits suspended over a Roman gate and Christian Egypt keeps its oldest address. The headline, though, has moved to the desert edge: the Grand Egyptian Museum now shows Tutankhamun's complete treasure within sight of the Giza pyramids, replacing the faded crimson hall on Tahrir as the city's must-see.

Come evening the city softens. Climb the lotus-shaped Cairo Tower on Gezira for the definitive 360° view, or take the older pleasure — a felucca tacking across the Nile at sunset while the call to prayer rolls across the rooftops from a thousand directions at once.