Bab Zuweila

Bab Zuweila is a stone city gate in the heart of Islamic Cairo, built in 1092 by the Fatimid vizier Badr al-Gamali as the southern limit of the walled city. Cairo's official history portal describes it as the only gate surviving from the southern wall of the Fatimid city; Bab al-Futuh and Bab al-Nasr survive in the north.

The two minarets that rise above it are later. They belong to the mosque of the Mamluk sultan al-Mu'ayyad Shaykh, built beside the gate in the early 15th century, which used the gate's two bastions as the bases of its minarets.

It is one of the few places where the medieval city walls are still something you can walk up to and into. The gate is a working part of the street rather than a monument behind a fence.

The minarets can be climbed, by a steep spiral stair, and the view from the top is one of the best over Old Cairo's rooftops and domes.

It stands at the southern end of Al-Muizz Street, the main spine of Fatimid Cairo, so it works as either the start or the end of a walk through the old city.

The Fatimids founded Cairo in 969. In 1092 the vizier Badr al-Gamali rebuilt the city's walls and gates in stone and moved the southern limit outwards, and the new Bab Zuweila replaced an earlier brick gate of the same name that has been lost.

The minarets came more than three centuries later. Cairo's portal dates them to 1415. Other sources give 1415 to 1420 for the minarets and 1415 to 1422 for the mosque, so you will see slightly different dates depending on the source.

• A Fatimid stone gate of 1092 still standing in the street
• Two Mamluk minarets built on the gate's bastions
• A climb with views over Islamic Cairo
• The southern end of Al-Muizz Street, with the Tentmakers' street close by