The Hanging Church (Al-Muallaqa), Old Cairo

The Hanging Church, known in Arabic as Al-Muallaqa, is the church of the Virgin Mary in Coptic Cairo. It sits above a gatehouse of the Roman Babylon Fortress, and the nave spans the passage below it, which is where the name comes from: the church is built over the gates rather than hung from anything.

From the street you see a nineteenth-century facade with twin bell towers. Behind it, a stair and a courtyard lead to an outer porch that one source dates to the eleventh century, and then into the church itself.

It is one of the best places in Cairo to see how a Christian community built on top of Roman Egypt. The church stands on the fortress, and a window in the floor lets visitors look down onto the Roman remains beneath.

The interior has the things people come for: icons, carved wooden screens, an arcaded courtyard and a marble pulpit mounted on slender columns.

It is small, quiet and easy to combine with the Coptic Museum and the other churches of Old Cairo in a single half day.

The age of the church is disputed. One source says it is one of the oldest churches in Egypt and dates to the third century; another says it was most likely built in the seventh century, possibly over an earlier church of the third or fourth century; a third gives the fourth century for the original foundation. All agree it has been rebuilt and extended many times.

The present structure is described as a smaller early church in the south and a principal church in the north, believed to date from different periods between the third and seventh centuries. The facade and bell towers are much later.

Two sources give the approach as 29 steps, and early travellers called it the Staircase Church.

• A church built over the gatehouse of the Roman Babylon Fortress
• A twin-towered nineteenth-century facade and an older arcaded courtyard
• A marble pulpit on slender columns
• Icons and carved wooden screens
• A view down onto Roman remains beneath the nave