Churches and Garbage City

We spent our Christmas day visiting some churches. Most churches in Egypt are Eastern Orthodox, so they celebrate Christmas on January 7, so it wasn’t Christmas day for them. We visited the Hanging Church first.

The story of Mary, Joseph and Jesus fleeing to Egypt gets prominent mention in all the churches.

You can see Islamic art influences in the entrance way.

Next we visited the Church of Abu Serga nearby.

It is famous for the crypt where the holy family supposedly spent time in hiding.

Then we visited the oldest Synagogue in Cairo. The courtyard of the synagogue is supposedly where the baby Moses was found.

Then a trip up to the citadel to see the Muhammad Ali Pasha Mosque.

We had lunch at Al-Azhar Park, which was built on the site of a former garbage dump.

After lunch, we had arranged with 14 others to go on a tour of the Garbage city portion of Cairo. This poor area acts as private garbage collectors and recylers for the rest of Cairo. You can see animals being raised on the rooftops of the buildings.

It also contains the cave churches, the largest is St. Simeon church. This church seats 15,000.

The cliff walls above the church have carvings from the life of Jesus.

I think this is St. Simeon the Tanner, the patron saint of the church.