The Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo

The Museum of Islamic Art stands in the Bab al-Khalq district of Cairo, at the corner of Port Said and Mohamed Ali streets. Its history goes back to 1903, and its collection is usually put at roughly 100,000 objects, of which only a part is on show.

A car bomb that exploded outside the nearby police headquarters in January 2014 damaged the building and its collection. Reports cite 179 damaged objects, most of them later restored, and the museum reopened in early 2017, about three years after the attack.

It shows the range of Islamic art from many regions and centuries in one place: ceramics and glass, metalwork and weapons, woodwork and textiles, and the tiles that decorated buildings.

It is a good companion to a walk through Islamic Cairo. The mosques and gates show the architecture; the museum shows the objects people made and used inside such buildings.

It is a calmer museum than the pharaonic ones, so it suits travellers who have already done the main temples and want something different.

Sources date the museum's foundation to 1903. Accounts of its closure before the bombing disagree: one says it was closed from 2003 to 2010 for a full renovation, another says it had been closed since 2002.

After the 2014 bomb, officials said that the number of pieces on display in the damaged wing rose from 1,450 to 4,400 once three new exhibit rooms had been built. The reopening ceremony in 2017 was attended by President Sisi.

• A collection of roughly 100,000 objects, with several thousand on display
• Ceramics, glass, metalwork, weapons, woodwork and textiles
• A building restored after the 2014 bombing
• A quieter alternative to the pharaonic museums