Ras El Tin Palace - Egypt
Monuments Restoration
:: Completed Projects
:: 2016 ::
It is one of the oldest palaces in Egypt and one of the historical and archaeological landmarks in Alexandria, and the first palace built by Muhammad Ali in a coastal area famous for planting fig trees. The palace witnessed the emergence and glow of the star of the Muhammad Ali family, which lasted about one hundred and fifty years, as well as the death of Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1848, the departure of Khedive Ismail from Egypt in 1879, and the departure of King Farouk on board the royal yacht “Al Mahrousa” heading to Italy after his abdication of the throne to his heir. Prince Ahmed Fouad. Commissioned by the Presidency of the Republic, the Arab Contractors Company, represented by the Department of Maintenance of Palaces and Antiquities, carried out preparatory studies, detailed registration, photographic and architectural documentation, and surveying to reveal the obliterated elements of the main facades, and the architectural models were compared to help restore each model to its origin. The eastern gate’s sill is surrounded by two lions in the middle of marble blocks containing birds and shields and two opposite eagles surrounding the name “Muhammad Ali”, which refers to the remaining part of the old palace built by Muhammad Ali Pasha and integrated into the construction of the new palace in its successive historical stages, and the gate consists of 6 granite columns It bears a lintel with seven circles in which Quranic verses are written in copper letters. The men of the company carried out the structural reinforcement works, which included the strengthening of the walls, the ceilings of the entrance, as well as the structural elements bearing the marble formations constituting the founding text of the palace, and the decorative elements they contained in which the diversity of style in the use of materials, between marble, copper and gilded copper, harmonizes. This stage included dismantling a large part of the archaeological marble formations, to reduce the loads, reach the appropriate structural treatment stages for the load-bearing walls and contracts, and remove the damaged concrete ceilings in an appropriate manner for treatment and replacement, and to raise the future efficiency of the working and supporting parts of the marble formation. Then the work team continued the architectural restoration work of the facade elements after revealing their origin, with the full thickness of the walls, to give an artistic painting showing the beauty of the marble texture, removing the new cladding covering the facade elements, reviving the obliterated architectural elements and deriving the missing ones. Detailed restoration works were also carried out for the main door ornaments, contracts, and others, in addition to careful restoration work for the fixed and movable archaeological elements of the facades and the entrance to the palace, including dismantling, restoring and upgrading the efficiency of the entire copper works with the aim of revealing their originality as well as isolating them to resist the marine environmental conditions surrounding the palace, then dismantling, restoring and rehabilitating The gilding of the decorative wooden elements on the ceiling of the entrance to the main gate. Re-gilding the copper elements, the founding text and the date of construction, and works to raise the efficiency of the letters and words of the copper inscription tape above the main entrance to the palace, then careful restoration work was carried out for the wooden elements in the main doors, which is the most prominent element, where the elements of the obliterated facade were revealed, the infringements removed, its efficiency increased, its restoration and the completion of the missing to return it to the original shape and composition at the time of the palace’s creation.