King Farouk´s palace and gardens

Here we have a green area, the one closest to Miami in Montazar, south Alex. Apart of being one of the few green areas, is not free to enter and is open to public only when security reasons do not oblige to close it. This beautiful lion welcomes you the the garden:

These gardens host the palace of King Farouk, the controversial penultimate king of Egypt, built in the mid XX century. Today is the Presidential Residence and the interior of the palace cannot be accessed by the public, so unfortunately the otherwise beautiful visit was reduced to a walk in the gardens. The Italian architect (i cannot be bothered to find out his name, im not interested) mixed a variety of styles: a tower in the corner resembling a minaret...but not quite:

And we always need more details, these stairs looks like extracted from an Gothic abbey:

And this reminded me of the words of Charles Correa when talking about Indian gardens: "when the built elements catch part of the sky"

The place when looked closely gives the sensation of a luxurious fortification. And those overhanging roofs...arent they the same than in my parents place in Santa Clara (Sevilla)?

The pines, palm trees and grass surround the palace. This particular view reminded me of south of Morocco (Agdz for example :P)


And in the middle of the palm trees this recently built white void tower is found, being a water deposit:


Some nice details were scattered around, the lamp posts:

The sleeping Lions on a fountain, but the tale tell us that the sleeping looking Lion is really awake, and the Lion with open eyes is really sleeping...


One of the palm tree wood bridges, with the pine trees in the background:


One detail of the sitting place in one of the kiosks built with wood and palm leaves:


The coast surrounds half of the perimeter, the ever present Mediterraneo in Alex. Lovely that was early in the morning and it is still not summer, so the place was deserted:


King Farouk even built an island in for drinking tea at 5pm, some say that he built the whole complex for that reason :D does it really matter? The rich people keep enjoying their tea in here, but in these days in their luxurious yatchs, the lighthouse help them to find their way:


And this fisherman was here at early time to catch his lunch:

And in here a couple more of fishermen in a concrete structure that is literally falling down. I think that is obvious the life time of this building material, no wonder why companies do not insure concrete buildings for longer than 10 or 25 years...meanwhile the pyramids in Giza and the Yemen stone and mud skyscrapers are still there after thousands of years:


Observe how in the first line of coast within the complex they are building these little beach houses, and they are selling them at ridiculous prices...and those beaches are private of course, so they are not accessible to the public either. They have built more things within the massive extension, like the Palestine Hotel (ugly and out of context) and a disco... Weird flavoured place...not quite my favourite taste.