Pedestrian activity of the Center for Alexandrian Studies on Fouad Street
Pedestrian activity by the Center for Alexandrian Studies on Fouad Street
Photos and text © by Iannis Kallianiotis, except otherwise stated
This pedestrian activity took place on November 1, 2025 along the axis of Fouad Street, the ancient Canopic Way, one of the two main roads of Hellenistic Alexandria, under the title:
" Mosaic of Lives"
with the humoristic subtitle "foot notes"
It took place in the context of the 16th annual edition of the Alexandrian Heritage Days organized by the Center for Alexandrian Studies (CEAlex)
The events that lasted from October 30 to November 8, 2025 went under the title:
Alexandria, a mosaic of neighbourhoods
The route followed was from Fouad Street to Nabi Daniel Street with 16 stops at iconic buildings.
It included an oral tour and a demonstration of some laminated photographs of the owners or the interiors of the buildings.
For each building, a few words about the nationality and occupations of each owner, in a friendly and understandably rather superficial tone, as the history of these buildings is also the history of Alexandria's ruling class and big money, the transfers of which rarely take place without strong turbulence.
The meeting point was outside the Sphinx bookstore at 127 Fouad Street, at 9 a.m.
The first participants can be seen here at 08.45. By 09.00 almost 80 persons were gathered.
Our guides were a smiling couple, Wafaa Abdelaziz and Juan Carlos Lucero, the language was English.
We began from the mansion of Vassili Pasha, today the Museum of the City of Alexandria.
Some information was given about the owner's commercial activities.
In the middle of the 20th century it became the U.S.A. Consulate and today houses the Museum of the City of Alexandria with city findings, from all historic eras from the Ptolemaic to the recent.
Here we can see Vassili Pasha's office and portrait
A complete tour of the Museum is included in the 2nd chapter of The Great Photo-Romance of Alexandria at the link:
For the moment this article is available only in Greek, so we advise the use of Google translate.
We moved westwards...
An abandoned Foreign Language School
Adriana Pinto Building
The Pinto family was originally from Livorno, as was Alessandro Loria, architect of the Cecil Hotel and the Miramar building.
There was no visit of the interior.
The Luzzatto building
Augusto Luzzatto Pasha (1830-1908), head of the family, was a banker who ran the Alexandria branch of the Bank of Egypt in 1890 and later oversaw its activities on a national level.
There was no visit of the interior.
The Pini House, the old Spanish Consulate, today the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute
Photo from the official website. Photographing the exterior of the building is discouraged for safety reasons...
According to the architect Dr. Mohamed Awad, Pini was an Italian contractor who was one of the first to buy land in the area and designed its urban planning. Mr Awad calls the area the Latin Quarter, an inappropriate term, heard for the first time. Obviously, he defines it south of Fouad Street, while north of the street is defined the Quartier Grec. As a resident of the area (1957-1979) I know, that the Quartier Grec extends from the Municipal Stadium to the Gardens of Shallalat (from north to south) and from the Bab et Shark Police Station to the Graeco-Roman Museum (from east to west).
The coat of arms of the Pini family at the ballroom's ceiling
The entrance staircase to the Pini house
The corridor of the reception areas
The ceiling of the reception corridor
The entrance and interior of the master's office
The decoration of the office and the portrait of Philip VI, King of Spain
The ballroom ceiling
We leave by the marble staircase
We continue on Fouad Street. I have asked our guides earlier for a short stop at number 84, where I could give them a brief introduction-presentation of the inhabitants of this building for the simple reason that I lived there from 1957 to 1979.
They politely remarked that there is no time and they were right, as the sequel proved.
Even in this context, such a presentation would interrupt the flow of the article, so I will revert with a separate tribute. The description of the inhabitants of a single okella highlights the Alexandrian mosaic of ethnicities.
1975 picture from the 3rd floor of the okella Torriel (84, Fouad str.), to the east.
Large Egyptian flag on the balcony of a school, a slightly smaller Spanish flag on the balcony of the Pini house, then the Spanish Consulate, today the Cervantes Institute.
The Okella Toriel at 84 Fouad Street, built 1904
Photo from the 3rd floor of the okella Toriel (84 Fouad str.) to the west.
At the corner of Fouad and Ptolemies streets, the Nomikos mansion, then the Sursok mansion, next stop of the tour. On the ground floor of the adjacent two-storey buildings, were in the 1960's the grocery store "Makris" and the bakery "Liakopoulos". Opposite them is the Emmanuel Benaki mansion.
The Sursok family Mansion 1/11/2025
Sursok mansion on 3/1/2009, photo by Alexander Kallianiotis
I quote photos of its interior, when it was inhabited by the family, from the book by
Dr. Mohamed Awad " The Beaux Arts on the Alexandrian Riviera"
The Mansion in 1890
The Sursok family is of Lebanese origin, Greek Orthodox in religion.
Their family grave is located in the Cemetery of the Greek Community of Alexandria.
The tour continues
We pass across the street, bypassing the Emmanuel Benaki mansion, which houses an art school for children and a small museum "Know Your Body", with models of bodies and organs.
We managed to visit the interior during an "open doors" day, promoting the school.
On the left, the entrance of the carriages from Fouad Street, in the middle and on the right, the wooden internal staircase.
Everywhere on the walls are children's paintings.
Views from the balcony of the Emmanuel Benaki mansion
To the east, the villas of Abu Shanab and Sursok, in the middle a two-storey building with " Makris" grocery store and "Liakopoulos" bakery, to the west a multi-storey construction site in place of the Vatimbella mansion.
Plate outside the Em. Benaki mansion
Our next stop is the Rolo Mansion on Ptolemies' street.
The mansion houses the Goethe Institute, but has been under renovation since August 2025 which is estimated to last 12 months. It is empty and works have not yet begun.
The tour
A detailed description of the mansion can be found in my article
For the moment this article is available only in Greek, so we advise the use of Google translate.
We proceed to a mansion on Pharaoh Street, which is presented to us as the residence of Antonis Benakis until 1932 when he left with the collections of the core of the homonymous Museum to Athens.
This is not a renovation, this is a reconstruction.
For comparison, I quote the photo © of Nikolas Sfikas, on page 150 of his book "Alexandria, from Cavafy to Alexander the Great".
The building next door
The information of both Giorgos Kypraios († 2025) and the Cairo born architect Nikolas Sfikas place the Benaki mansion in this building, whereas in the book by Dr. Mohamed Awad " The Beaux Arts at the Alexandrian Riviera" the same building is presented as the Bacos mansion architected by Walter André Destailleur.
The architect Nikolas Sfikas insists that the Bacos mansion was the next building that was demolished and this mansion with the voukrania on the marble propylon and the Doric columns was owned by Benaki.
It was built for Baron de Menasce, became the Tawil mansion and today houses the American Library.
The garden
Photos of the interior of the mansion when it was inhabited
Courtesy to the American Library of Dr. Mohamed Awad
Okella de Menasce, 63-65 Fouad Street, architects Paraskevas and Miklavez,
opposite the demolished Municipal Counsil Building and the renovated Graeco-Roman Museum
Exactly opposite the previous building stood the Governorate of Alexandria (Municipal Council)
Our guides inform us that this building replaced a previous one, demolished after the 1952 revolution.
In the 1960's Governor of Alexandria was the prominent Zakaria Mohedin, sporting (a rare for that time of car import prohibition) model of Lincoln Continental, very similar to the above.
The Governor's office around 1972
From the right Abdel Moneim Wahby, Governor of Alexandria, Charalambos Papadopoulos, Consul General of Greece in Alexandria and Spyro Kallianiotis, Chancellor of the Greek Consulate.
After the 2011 revolt. Valuable archives were destroyed by the fire.
Eventually the building was brought down, giving place to a spacious square.
Letting the renovated Graeco-Roman Museum breathe.
In the meantime, the wave of renovation and painting of the facades is progressing here as well.
Savoy Palace Hotel
The famous Amir cinema of 20th Century Fox screenings
It has been converted into a 4-screen multiplex
Here we had assisted on a Sunday afternoon in 1965 to a projection of the film " The Sound of Music".
A gathering of the Tsonakis, Lambis, Kalogirou, Kydonakis and Kallianiotis families, sat on the first row of the balcony (at that time in Alexandria the best seats), enjoyed a blissful entertainment.
Just opposite Cinema Amir, lies what is left of the façade of the Palais de Zogheb
It is located, as if hidden, 2 meters behind the building line of Fouad Street
In the link below, Count Patrice de Zogheb describes the Palace and its history in detail.
The monogram on the front door and through a window, the sky.
Next comes the Mohammed Aly Theater, almost at the place of the old Zizinia Theater
Today it is called Sayed Darwish and was built between 1916 and 1921
In its courtyard the statue of Noubar Pasha (1825-1899), transferred from Sultan Hussein Street
At his feet, the volumes of the Consessions.
In the 1960s and 1970s the theater still retained its old patina.
The concerts and ballets, mainly of Soviet provenance at a high level of art and aesthetics, were still frequented by old Alexandrians, financially ruined but art-loving, ladies and gentlemen elegantly dressed, in elaborate clothes of the pre-revolutionary era.
Everywhere today's renovations have a plastification aura.
The tour ended at the twin villas Aghion on Nabi Daniel Street
They used to house the French Consulate and the French Institute.
My time limit was reached at that point, and had to leave, so let me present you photos of the premises during the evening opening of the exhibition on 30/10/2025 with the title:
"Alexandria, a history of neighbourhoods"
Today the French Institute is housed here
On the one side of the garden, a fully equipped cinema/theater hall has been built.
It does not have the external splendor of the Ioulia Salvagou Hall of the Greek Compound, nor its capacity, but has comfortable seats and enviable technological equipment.
The other side of the garden hosts a typical French bistro under the Alexandrian foliage, open to everyone from morning to late at night.
This building marked the end of the four-hour pedestrian activity with a large participation of about 80 persons, who got a taste of the city and visited some interiors. The Cervantes Institute and the American Library were the undisputed protagonists.
Warm thanks to our guides Wafaa Abdelaziz and Juan Carlos Lucero, for their smiling resilience and positive energy throughout the tour.
Photos and text © by Iannis Kallianiotis, except otherwise stated
