When a Belgian baron built a ‘Hindu palace’ near Cairo

On the last day of June 2020, throngs of Cairenes queued patiently to enter a little piece of India in a suburb of the Egyptian capital. The doors of Le Palais Hindou (Hindu Palace), or the Baron Empain Palace, were thrown open to the public after a $10.9 million renovation by Egypt’s Armed Forces Engineering Authority that took three years. The building, which was restored to its original copper red colour after having a beige appearance for decades, was the brainchild of Baron Edouard Empain, a Belgian engineer-turned-industrialist who is best remembered in Egypt as the founder of Heliopolis, a township that was built in the desert near Cairo.

At the reopening, jubilant residents of the Egyptian capital posed for photos in front of a balustrade of Shiva on a Naga and a Yali, which seemed to particularly fascinate the Cairenes. The building which many claimed was haunted by the spirit of Empain’s sister, who allegedly fell to her death from a balcony, had slowly fallen into disrepair. The mansion changed hands a few times after the 1950s and its one-time Saudi owners wanted to convert it into a casino. Its very existence, however, marks the success of Empain, who fought difficult…

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