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Northwest of Heliopolis, several former villages have evolved into ramshackle baladi suburbs. El-Zeitun (the Olives) merits a footnote in history as the site of Sultan Selim's defeat of the Mamlukes in 1517 and of conspiratorial gatherings of Free Officers during the early 1950s. The adjacent Helmiya quarter gets its name from yet another khedival palace built last century. But for actual sights you have to venture even further out, into Matariyya. The modern suburb of Matariyya traces its antecedents way back to the Old Kingdom and claims later acquaintance with the infant Christ. As evidence of the former, the neighbourhood's Midan al-Misallah displays a 22-metre-high, pink granite Obelisk of Senusert I . One of a pair raised to celebrate the pharaoh's Jubilee Festival (c.1900 BC), it originally stood outside the Temple of Re, erected by Amenemhat I, Senusert's father, who founded the XII Dynasty. Another pair, belonging to the XVIII Dynasty ruler Tuthmosis III, were moved by the Romans to Alexandria, whence they ended up in New York's Central Park and on London's Embankment. However, the significance of this site and its cult of the sun-god are far older, dating back to the earliest dynasties. Cairo's metro makes this sector of the northern suburbs readily accessible from the centre. Matariyya metro station is eleven stops from Tahrir, in the direction of El-Marg; the neighbourhood can also be reached by tram from Heliopolis and along Sharia Bur Said from Saiyida Zeinab
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