Editors: Mohamed Awad and Sahar Hamouda

This catalogue celebrates the centennial of the birth of the seventh art in Egypt. It boasts an impressive list of firsts in Egypt which all took place in Alexandria: the first screening of a Lumière brothers’ film in the Toussoun Bourse in 1896, the inauguration of the first cinema hall in 1897, the shooting of the first French film Alexandria’s Place des Consuls in 1897, the first film studio in Egypt established by Aziz and Dorés in 1907, and the first Egyptian short documentary filmed by photographers Aziz and Dorés in 1907, to name but a few. This publication was part of the AlexCinema project funded by the European Union.

Editors: Mohamed Awad and Sahar Hamouda

Voices from Cosmopolitan Alexandria is an oral narrative of Alexandrians representing the communities and creeds that for decades made this city their home. Together, the voices tell the tale of the rich diversity, tolerance and cultural interaction that had created the cosmopolitan city par excellence: Alexandria. This book was part of the Mediterranean Voices: Oral History and Cultural Practices project funded by the European Union and coordinated by London Metropolitan University.

During the period between March 2006 and October 2007, Alex Med undertook a survey of the bathhouses, or hammams, of Alexandria as part of its overall mission to study, document and preserve the city’s architectural and urban heritage. Use was made of multiple documents from the archives of the Alexandria law courts and municipality, which are kept in Dar el Watha’ak el Qaumayya (the National Archives), as well as other sources. During the course of this survey, an unknown hammam called the Hassan Abdallah Hammam, was discovered. In addition, reconstructions of the design of three hammams no longer in existence, were made according to detailed descriptions discovered in old documents. Finally, the geographic location of ancient and no longer existing hammams was ascertained using old maps.

The major findings of this survey were published in a book entitled Hammamat el Eskandarieh fe el Qarnien el Tas’a ‘ashar wal ‘ashreen in November 2007 to coincide with the fifth anniversary celebrations of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.