Cabinet · Old Cairo · Drawer 02
Gayer-Anderson house museum
Bayt al-Kritliyya — the Gayer-Anderson Museum — is a lived-in Ottoman house attached to Ibn Tulun Mosque: mashrabiya screens, harem quarters, reception halls, and Major Gayer-Anderson's collected furnishings frozen as domestic Egypt circa 1930s.
Unlike vitrine museums, you walk carpeted floors and climb narrow stairs — house as specimen, collector as curator of atmosphere.
Room sequence
Muhammad Ali reception room with gilt furniture; women's quarters with lattice light; rooftop pavilion overlooking mosque minaret — each drawer a social class and gendered space preserved in plaster and wood.
Collector's eye
Anderson's military career and Orientalist taste show in mixed objects — Persian tiles beside Egyptian brass, English portraits beside Syrian chests. Read rooms as autobiography, not neutral archaeology.
Combine with Ibn Tulun same morning — mosque courtyard then house interior. Remove shoes where indicated; low doorways reward slow movement.
Drawer 02 proves Egypt's museum map includes human-scale houses — intimate cabinets beside monumental halls.