On the surrounding streets, several buildings are covered with scaffolding, while others have already been given a facelift. This bustling district, which locals refer to as wust al-balad (“city centre” in Arabic), is undergoing a transformation and Shafei is at its heart. Since Al Ismaelia was founded in 2008, it has bought and renovated dozens of properties here, setting the tone for a revival that is gathering pace.

“He’s Mr Downtown,” says one resident of the area. Karim Shafei, CEO, Al Ismaelia Cairo, the sprawling home of 23 million people, is a city in flux. In its hinterland rise new satellite cities, including a purpose-built administrative capital and suburbs of residential compounds.

Centuries-old cemeteries have been demolished to make way for roads and bridges. On the banks of the Nile, beloved houseboats have been dismantled and public gardens replaced by concrete walkways. All of this has taken place under the tightly controlled rule of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who rose to Egypt’s presidency about a year after leading a military coup in 2013.

The changing face of Cairo since then has not been without controversy but the regeneration of its downtown is a particularly sensitive issue because of the place that it has long occupied in the Egyptian imagination. “Downtown is unique,” says the denim-jacketed Shafei as he takes Monocle on a walking tour of some of Al Ismaelia’s properties. It is mid-morning and the air is filled with a cacophony of car horns.

A man cycles past, balancing on his head an enormous tray piled high with freshly baked bread. The core of downtown Cairo’s architectural landscape – where crumbling belle époque façades can be spotted alongside later structures that nod to art deco and modernist influences, as well as neo-everything, from pharaonic to Renaissance and Ottoman – dates back to a modernisation drive launched by 19th-century Egyptian ruler Ismail Pasha. Influenced by Haussmann’s Paris, the resulting avenue-lined quarter became an international social and cultural centre of gravity.

Numerous films and novels were set in and around the coffee houses, cinemas, theatres and clubs dotting its elegant boulevards. A downtown juice kiosk 1 / 3 A downtown juice kiosk 1 / 3 Stephenson & Co Chemists 2 / 3 Cinema Radio, a historic cinema building in downtown Cairo renovated by the Ismaelia group 3 / 3 Since the mid-20th century, however, the character of Cairo’s downtown has been gradually transformed by revolutions, coups and economic crises. For many years, the district was a melancholic version of its former self: dilapidated, dusty and traffic-clogged.

Pollution and grime had degraded its formerly grand apartment buildings, mansions and palaces. In 2008, The American University in Cairo – one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the Middle East – relocated its campus to the suburbs, removing the buzz of student life from the area. Government ministries, company headquarters and banks also migrated to the city’s outskirts.

When construction of the recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum began in Giza, it seemed as though the older, salmon-pink neoclassical national museum on Tahrir Square was – like wust al-balad more generally – fading into the past. Today traces of the neighbourhood’s cosmopolitan heyday remain in the names on many of its shopfronts, including Stephenson & Co Chemists, the Anglo-Eastern Pharmacy, the Greek Club, and the Lehnert and Landrock bookshop. As we cross downtown with Shafei, ducking through alleyways and skipping across rooftops, he explains that though Al Ismaelia’s vision for the area respects its extraordinary heritage, it is not nostalgic.

“We want to make this a place where different layers of contemporary Egyptian identity are celebrated – a place where all parts of society feel comfortable,” he says. Nearby, shopfronts featuring mannequins dressed in skimpy lingerie contrast with others selling Islamic headscarves. Born and raised in the affluent Dokki neighbourhood on the other side of the Nile, Shafei realised downtown’s potential in 2000 after he attended the groundbreaking Nitaq contemporary arts festival, at which exhibitions and performances took place in neglected buildings and other spaces.

He points out several Al Ismaelia buildings as we stroll. The former French consulate is now a four-storey co-working space; an old pension known as La Viennoise has become Mazeej Balad, a hotel with a buzzy rooftop bar and restaurant. The famous Cinema Radio complex, meanwhile, has been lushly restored and now hosts cabaret shows. The adjoining passageway features a sleek esp