Baron Empain Palace — the 'Hindu palace' of Heliopolis

OVERVIEW

The Baron Empain Palace, also called Le Palais Hindou, stands in Heliopolis, north-east of central Cairo. It was built for Édouard Empain, a Belgian industrialist who came to Egypt in 1904 to build railways and created Heliopolis. The French architect Alexandre Marcel designed it after Angkor Wat and the temples of Orissa, in reinforced concrete, covered with monkeys, elephants, lions, snakes and statues of Buddha, Shiva and Krishna.

HISTORY

The Baron lived there with his wife, two sons and, it is said, a daughter. After his death in 1929, and the 1952 coup, the palace stood abandoned. In the 1990s young people broke in to party and take drugs, and the conservative backlash accused them of Satanism. The Egyptian government acquired it in 2005 for Heliopolis's centenary, listed it as a historical monument in March 2007, and in 2012 agreed with Belgium to restore it as an international art and cultural centre; work began in late 2016.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

HEARSAY. Widely spread rumours say the Baron's daughter had a medical or mental condition and was hidden from the world, and that she or the Baron's wife took her own life in the palace — the source of its haunted reputation. Wikipedia's list of reportedly haunted locations adds that tourists have reportedly heard voices in the palace late at night, and that guards and police have reported former residents wandering the lawn at midnight. No named witness or record is given for any of it. Filed UNVETTED.

VISITING

A listed monument in Heliopolis, restored with Belgium from 2016. Opening arrangements are not recorded in the source.