Città dei Morti: slum o scenario del patrimonio immateriale egiziano?

City of the Dead: slum or scenario of immaterial Egyptian heritage? - Cairo’s City of the Dead consists of an ancient urban Muslim cemetery (642 AD). Al Qarafa, its Arabic name, still functions today as a burying place, but with the peculiarity that it has as many as eighteen urban neighbourhoods with approximately one million residents. Sector studies which rubber stamp the different areas as a single milieu, classify it as a slum. In reality this necropolis, one of the more liveable working class metropolitan districts, represents a stratification of traditions and customs that have accumulated in Egypt from the time of the Pharaohs until today. To unravel the complexity of that body of demographic, ethnic and anthropological values that are closely interwoven with the City’s monumental heritage might be useful for further reflection on the future destiny of the City of the Dead. Under the government urban redevelopment project ‘Vision 2050’, it is to be demolished, partly for the construction of a park. Basically it is a question of valuing this co-existence of the living and the dead as a distinctive feature, the product of a historical and cultural heritage that is unique in the world.;

Anna Tozzi Di Marco, Città dei Morti: slum o scenario del patrimonio immateriale egiziano? in "TERRITORIO" 50/2009, pp 25-25, DOI: 10.3280/TR2009-050003