Lovely Roda Island — just south of Gezira Island — is home to Monastirli Palace, once the residence of an Ottoman pasha. Inside the palace gardens, right at the island’s southern tip, is Cairo’s Nilometer, which was used to measure the ebb and flow of the Nile and predict the annual flood heights. Unlike the Nilometers you’ll see in Upper Egypt (such as the surviving Nilometer on Elephantine Island in Aswan), this one is a much later construction, built in AD 861.
Also in the palace grounds is the small Umm Khalthum Museum, which celebrates the life of Egypt’s famed diva. Umm Khalthum (1898-1975) is the Arab world’s beloved songstress, and you’ll hear her music everywhere you go in Egypt, blasted out onto the street from ahwas (traditional coffeehouses) and on the stereo of nearly every taxi. Inside, the museum holds a collection of the singer’s possessions, including her fabulously sequined stage costumes, and there’s an interesting black and white documentary on her life (with English subtitles).
Outside the palace, Roda Island’s streets are fun to wander and still have some dilapidated mansion architecture of the early 20th century
