Shepheard's Hotel

On one occasion, when soldiers staying at the hotel were suddenly moved to Crimea, leaving unpaid bills, Shepheard travelled personally to Sevastopol in order to collect payment.

Richard Burton, a close friend of Shepheard, left a detailed description of his generous character and successful career, describing him as "a remarkable man in many points, and in all things the model John Bull".

Zech employed the services of a young Nuremberg-born German architect, Johann Adam Rennebaum, to design a hotel on the same plot that would far exceed its predecessors in size and luxury.

[6] The near-total omission of Rennebaum's name in the documentation of the hotel has likely to do with a concerted attempt by the British colonial authorities after the First World War to eradicate any trace of German influence in Egypt .

It was renowned for its opulence, with stained glass, Persian carpets, gardens, terraces, and great granite pillars resembling those of the Ancient Egyptian temples.

[9] Bartender Joe Scialom was looking to make a hangover drink for allied troops and according to story made one as a "cure" for the suffering soldiers who complained about the poor quality of liquor in the area.

The writer Philip Toynbee described it in his diary as an "ancient hell"[15] Among its famous guests were Aga Khan, the Maharajah of Jodhpur, Richard Markgraf and Winston Churchill.

[16] On 26 January 1952 the hotel was destroyed during the Cairo Fire, a period of anti-British riots and dramatic civil unrest that led to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.

[20] The hotel is used as a base of operations in The Race Colonization series by Harry Turtledove,[21] as a location in Agatha Christie's Crooked House,[22] and is mentioned in Death on the Nile and Anthony Trollope's short-p story, "An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids" (1861).

signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia's AlSharif Group Holding to finance developing and furnishing the renovation worth $90 million.