Taz Palace at Al Khalifa gets massive restoration project

The Mameluke palace of Taz situated at Al Khalifa district is to be restored at costs of LE20 million. According to Director of the Data Centre of Historic Cairo, Ayman Abdul Moniem, the palace was established 500 years ago by Emir Taz one of the princes of Sultan Hassan.

Abdul Moniem said that the palace was adversely affected during the l992 earthquake but the restoration project had only been decided recently when a segment of a wall had collapsed.

According to a report written by an ad-hoc committee the palace suffers from many problems some of which goes back to the time of establishment and others to the Ottoman age during which time some of the main walls of the palace were restored.

He explained that the palace was used as a school during the rule of Ali pasha Mubarak until its condition deteriorated. It was then used as a main storehouse for the Ministry of Education for school textbooks.

Abdul Moniem explained that the palace had been evacuated so that restoration would be carried out.

He further said that the project involved three stages: determining points of danger, removing modern structures added by the Ministry of Education to suit the nature of the function the palace served and conducting studies to determine extinct archaeological elements while the third phase included overall restoration.