MASTERPIECE
The Alexandria Royal Jewelry Museum

It is summer time and all is fleeing to Alexandria and the North Coast. If you go to Alexandria never miss the chance to visit the Royal Jewelry Museum.

The Royal Jewelry Museum
A Landmark of Alex!

By: Eiman El Noshokaty, Hassan Ahmed, Rosaline Moneer, Sara Abbass & Soha Ahmed (Alex Art Club)

Hello there! At last, we, members of the Alex Art Club, are back - long time no see! Anyway, we've lately been thinking of sharing with you guys an appreciation of our lovely historic places in Alex, so let's talk a bit about the Jewelry Museum in Zeyzenya!

As we all know, jewelry is considered the most genius, precious and absolutely marvelous work of art known by mankind since early history. Tradition reveals that kings, sultans and princes were eager to possess jewelry collections as a sign of wealth and luxury. The royal family in Egypt were also keen on that; they exhibited their collections in festivals and historic events. Those superb pieces of art were passed through generations - through a period of 147 years of historical heritage.

The collection housed in the Royal Jewelry Museum belonged to Mohammad Aly, founder of modern Egypt, who was an officer in the Turkish army when he came to Egypt in 1800. He was made ruler in 1805 and his sons and grandsons succeeded him to the throne. The palace where the jewels are housed is enough reason for you to visit the museum. It belongs to princess Fatma Aly Heidar (1903 - 1983), granddaughter of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mohammad Aly. The building of the palace started in 1919 and ended in 1923, by Egyptian artists led by Aly Fahmy (princess Fatma's uncle) with the help of Italian artist Antoine Laisek (founder of the Sidi-Gaber railway station).

In 1962, the palace was turned into a presidential hosting palace, and in 1986 the president ordered its transformation into a museum for the royal family's jewelry. In 1994, it was restored under the orders of the minister of culture. The palace consists of nine rooms, five of which are on the lower floor, two bathrooms, the corridor and the main hall. Guesses were made as to the purpose of each room: one, situated right in the middle, was said to be a dancing room; one a library, as on its walls hang a collection of pictures relating the legend of Odessa; and one was said to be a smoking room, as its ceiling was smartly designed using gypsum to absorb the smoke. The porcelain used in the bathrooms is Italian, and the stained glass used for the windows is French but with Italian design.

The most outstanding pieces of jewelry in the museum are the polychrome enameled snuffbox bearing the name of Mohammad Aly in rose cut diamond, the plumy end miniature portraits collection of Khediv Ismail and his family, the gold candy box bearing his portrait, the gold chess set of King Farouk I and his military scepter, plus the two diamonds that had belonged to Queen Farida and princess Shewikar, the first wife of King Fouad I before he was appointed as king.

In a nutshell, we were all really impressed by the magnificent and extremely rare pieces of art exhibited. And we'd like to thank the very helpful staff of the museum, who provided us with all the information we needed.

Published with special permission from www.teenstuffonline.com