Site's History
Khedive Ismail (1830 - 1895) decided at the end of the nineteenth century to invest the Helwan area, which is 25 kilometers south of Cairo, by establishing a tourist and medical resort in the small city with lush gardens and sulfur water springs, as well as its proximity to the areas of Pharaonic monuments such as Saqqara and Giza, making it a target for programs Western tourist.
In 1868, Ismail sent a group of experts, including his own doctor, to Helwan to study the nature of wells and the possibility of developing and investing the place. Experts pointed to the important medicinal properties found in the wells of Helwan. Khedive Ismail decided to build a palace there in 1877 and gave it to his mother, and it was called the “Palace of the Mother.” The construction of the palace encouraged the royal family, the wealthy, and foreigners to build palaces and luxury villas in the same area, which necessitated linking Helwan to Cairo with a railway line to facilitate access to it, and that was in 1880. With the opening of the new railway line in 1889, investors began to buy land next to it. The road and the sale process at the beginning of the twentieth century resulted in the Mosiri family, one of the leaders of the Jewish community at the time, obtaining large areas of the Maadi division after purchasing them from the Delta Land Company, which was established by the British aristocracy in Egypt.
The reason for the emergence of Maadi as a neighborhood was the construction of a central station in 1890 for the train linking Sayeda Zeinab and Helwan. Canadian officer Alexander Adams bought 143 acres for housing investment from her, this area represents the current area of Maadi Sarayat. The demand for its housing increased starting in 1910 after the establishment of the Yacht Club on about 15 acres in the heart of the new neighborhood. Then demand increased at the end of 1913 when the construction of the world's first solar power plant on the land of the newborn neighborhood "Maadi".
In 1912 and 1913, Frank Schumann built the world's first solar power plant on the outskirts of Maadi to pump water from the Nile to nearby cotton fields.
Recently with the population increasing, the quiet neighborhood has expanded. It is bordered on the west by Corniche El-Nile Street, while it is bordered by the highway extension from Helwan to Nasr City from the east, where the new Maadi suburb and Zahraa Maadi area were established.
