AN EMPTY HOUSE is like a body without a soul; one whose soul was left to wander in the limbo of time. Over 50 years of neglect has left unmistakable proof of the passage of time on the body of Heliopolis’ enigmatic Baron Palace, sentencing its soul to decades of tormented meandering through the streets of Heliopolis.

Vandalized by bats and prowlers, the palace had been shrouded in a web of intriguing urban legends that have become part of the collective memory of generations of Egyptians until its reincarnation was finally announced to coincide with Heliopolis’ centenary celebrations.

To crown a campaign spearheaded by First Lady Susan Mubarak, the Egyptian government reclaimed ownership of the palace. A full restoration is also in the pipeline. What it will be reincarnated as nobody yet knows; perhaps a museum or a community center to host high-profile events.

For now, you can just walk in and see it for yourself.

In 1907, Belgian tycoon Baron-General Edouard Louis Joseph Empain (1852-1929), who was then simply known as the Baron (the title General would come later, stemming from his service to his king in the First World War) decided to build his own Heliopolis residence from which to overlook the rise of his burgeoning utopia.

Mohsen Allam The tower offers a panoramic view of Heliopolis.

He commissioned the French architect Alexandre Marcel to design it in the style of a Hindu temple. Marcel, who also built the Basilique Church in 1910, was to be responsible for the exterior, while the interior was left in the hands of another French architect and decorator, Georges-Louis Claude.

In 1911, the curtain was removed from an architectural flight of fancy unlike anything built in Egypt before or since. The odd combination of Hindu and Renaissance architecture and motifs much of it with a nod to a famous Cambodian temple was unique.

“It’s an eccentric thing,” says Mercedes Volait, research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, a think tank affiliated with the University of Tours that studies urbanization in the Arab World. The French scholar is also on the scientific committee for Heliopolis’ centenary and is an expert on 19th and 20th century architecture in Egypt.

“It’s made of reinforced concrete, so one of the features adding to its value is that it exhibits one of the earliest uses of concrete. A French engineer had invented it at the end of the 19th century and the Baron’s palace was one of the most well-known uses of it. It was a kind of advertising for the new material. If it had been built the conventional way with stone, it would have cost millions. The concrete helped create this kind of fantasy. It’s a very original building,” she continues. “Not extraordinary, but original. Its location overlooking the whole neighborhood adds massively to its appeal.”

According to Samir Raafat, the noted Egyptian public historian and social commentator, three generations of Empains occupied the premises. The first Baron Empain (who died of cancer in Belgium on July 23, 1929 but stipulated in his will that he be buried in Egypt) was a regular who received what Raafat refers to as Egypt’s “hotes de marques,” including Belgian King Albert and Queen Elizabeth during their pre-WW1 visit to Egypt. He was followed by his playboy son Baron Jean Empain, who hosted innumerable palace balls, while the last to live there were Edouard Empain’s grandchildren Janine and Huguette.

Mohsen Allam An elaborately detailed Renaissance-style ceiling

The 1952 revolution marked the end of the belle epoch for many affluent foreigners who lived in Egypt. When sequestration policies began to take effect, Baron Jean Empain, who was heir to his father’s business and property, gave everything over to a Belgian company to sell at an auction. From that point onwards, conflicting versions of the history and fate of the palace began to emerge, creatively colored by urban legends and elaborate rumors.

Some claimed that the palace was sold in 1955 to Saudi businessman Mohammed Ali Reda and his Syrian partner for LE 160,000; others alleged that it was sold to them in the early 1960s for LE 2 million. In any case, it was rumored that the curse of the Baron akin to the curse of the Pharaohs aborted any plans to tear down the house and replace it with a mega project or turn it into a health spa as the new owners wanted.

Although it had not yet crossed the legally magical 100-year threshold to be declared an antiquity, Decree 1297 for 1992 of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) officially declared the palace a national monument because of its aesthetic and historical significance. Under Antiquities Law No. 117/1983, the palace had become a registered national monument, which meant that the owners had no right to change so much as a door knob.

The deadlock between the owners and the SCA translated into the gradual deterioration of the palace and hence more stories wafted out of it. Some swore that they could see light and hear music emerging from it, as if there were parties as in the old days; others believed that it was haunted by the spirit of the Baron’s daughter, who committed suicide at the end of a love affair with one of the servants. In the late 1990s, young Satan worshippers allegedly staged wild orgies and black communions in the basement, where they sacrificed animals, mutilated themselves and wrote blasphemous sentences with their own blood on the walls. Others claim the ‘Satan worshippers’ were no more threatening than local fans of heavy metal music looking for a place to jam in peace.

Less lurid rumors declared that the palace was built on a rotating base to allow the Baron to oversee the entire vicinity without moving from his seat. Others claim there was a secret tunnel beneath the house connecting it to the Basilique Church and that the Baron had custom-made a special vehicle to transport him through it. A contentious point among historians is the story of an envious Sultan Hussein Kamel who, on attending the inauguration of the palace, had tried to coerce the Baron into offering it to him. The Baron refused but, in order to appease him, built him a Moorish-style mansion across the street and gave it to him as a gift. Allegedly, the Sultan was so livid he didn’t accept the lavish gift and the house was named after his wife Sultana Malek, who lived there until the 1950s.

Mohsen Allam= One of the many faces from the East visitors will see scattered across the Palace’s façade

Raafat strongly refutes these claims, stating that the Sultan ascended the throne in 1914, three years after the Baron Palace was built, and presenting documentary evidence that he had already been living in Heliopolis since 1903. (Refaat documents the claims on egy.com, his popular website devoted to Egyptian history.)

In March, the Nazif government, unable to dish out the $50 million they were demanding, offered the owners 115 feddans in New Cairo as compensation for the palace. At long last, the Baron Palace was to be saved from the worst curse of all: that of being forgotten.

The Baron Palace is built on an artificial elevation centered on a six-feddan plot in the heart of Heliopolis. Scaled panels, friezes and sculpture forged by Indonesian artists highlight the façade, each detail vying for your attention. The wall surrounding the palace’s encircling terrace is engraved with a blend of floral designs and carved images of squatting male and female figures typical of Hindu temples. This motif is prevalent throughout the entire structure.

The remains of a Renaissance-style headless, armless, half-nude sandstone statue of a man ushers you in as you go up the stairs of the main entrance. On the left side of the porch rests another Versailles Palace-type work: an erotic sculpture of a partially nude female figure, complete with Marie Antoinette hairdo, caressing a lamb. Both seem like a bit of an anomaly compared to the overwhelming style of the palace, underscoring it as the meeting point of many civilizations.

Mohsen Allam One of the more disturbingstatues highlights a parapet corner.

Dragons, Krishnas and Shivas engraved in large leaf-shaped structures mark the four edges of the terrace. What’s unusual is that Shiva, for instance, who is traditionally depicted with four arms, is portrayed here with four serpent heads. Alexandre Marcel, the French architect who designed the palace, did not exactly replicate a specific Hindu temple; rather, he created his own peculiar version by combining diverse motifs.

“An Indian art historian had made a very accurate study of the palace,” says CNRS’ Volait, corroborating my own impression, “and concluded that the Baron Palace is a collage of many pieces of Indian style. The architect picked elements from different locations, but was very loyal to the original models which dated between the 10th to the 17th century.”

Back to the main entrance. On the right hand side, two vertical clusters of figures comprising figures of Shiva, an elephant and a lion form the columns at the base of the layered tower of the palace. (The tower resembles those at Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, the stone masonry temple built in 1140 and said to be the world’s largest religious structure.) The highly ornate façade is impressive in terms of scale and detail. Within a perforated white arch covering the main entrance, a deity sits peacefully in the center with engravings of human figures in various postures of supplication on either side.

Above it, the corpulent head of a smiling Buddha welcomes visitors, his congenial face countering the hostile, powerful lions on both sides of the steps leading up from the garden. As if to prepare for the change of mood awaiting us inside, two headless pink marble, toga-clad statues in the Greco-Roman style are placed in niches to the right and left of the wooden door; the door itself is reminiscent of mashrabeyya latticework common in Old Cairo, with iron studs separating the carved pattern of the Islamic star. The signature on the base of the sculptures reads “Corodier 1872.”

The floors and walls of the foyer are covered entirely in marble. Four marble columns, two on either side, are a highlight. Sitting cross-legged atop each of them are small statues which look to visitors like the ancient Egyptian scribes at the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square. By then, I was expecting anything. The palace was proving more and more a Pandora’s Box of diverse civilizations. Intricately carved wooden cornices depicting recurring bands of Hindu deities (or are they soldiers?) decorate the ceiling all around the room. A large elephant head protruding from the wall breaks the monotony.

Mohsen Allam A Hindu-influenced mural decorating an otherwise bare wall

The vestibule opens from both sides onto two large banquet halls exhibiting a completely different style. The patterned parquet floors and wood-paneled European-style walls are engraved with tableaus of natural scenery a man under a willow at a river bank, for example. A throwback to Hapsburg Palaces, the ceilings are emblazoned with intricately carved floral designs. What remains of an immense fireplace made of black and white marble imported from Italy gives a hint of past grandeur. Now large patches of wall seem to have been stripped of the paintings or Belgian mirrors which once embellished them, leaving instead traces of youthful folly a black swastika here, a hollow skull there. The graffiti was excruciating to look at.

Across from the marble staircase leading to the second floor, a small room houses a lift and a dumbwaiter. On the landing beneath the stairs lies the severed body of a semi-nude sculpture of a male figure. I reckoned that it must belong to the solitary head I spotted in the garden on my way in. Perhaps it depicted the valiant Jason or maybe Hercules. The marble stairs are in surprisingly good shape, except that large sections of the balustrade are missing. An empty wood frame at least 20 square meters hangs on the wall to the left of the staircase, a reminder of the Persian or Indian rug which adorned it a little under a hundred years ago. All that remains of an enormous glassless window which takes up the larger part of the wall on your way up is the flower-patterned wrought iron window guard that served the multiple purposes of ornamentation, natural lighting, ventilation and security.

The second floor contains a large drawing room and four bedrooms with en suite bathrooms. The style is predominantly European, with parquet floors, a fireplace or at least the space where the fireplace used to be and carved ceilings complete with garlanded cherubs and cupids. The bathrooms, each with its own porcelain tub, are all tiled in different colors, some in a combination of white and beige and others in white and baby blue. Even the bathrooms have ornate cornices and engraved ceilings. Marcel’s strategic positioning of the large windows and balconies is simply a stroke of genius: each room and bathroom is filled with light and air throughout the day.

I understood now why newspaper articles kept referring to it as the Palace of the Sun.

On the down side, the second floor was probably the chosen abode of Cairo’s entire population of bats, as evidenced by the shocking condition of the walls especially those of the smallest bedroom all of which are completely smeared with bat guano. The Ministry of Housing, which had cleaned out the palace before opening it to the public on May 5, must have exerted an incredible effort to make it look as clean as it does now.

Mohsen Allam The entrance and tower, which combine elements of Hindu and Cambodian temples

A spiraling wooden staircase leads you inside the tower. I was astounded at how sturdy it was. Not a single squeak sounded as I cautiously climbed up, half-expecting it to collapse underneath me. Each of the two levels in the tower has four small verandas giving a bird’s eye view of Heliopolis in all directions. The first level also opens onto the roof, where the Baron must have hosted barbecues and moonlit parties. Carved elephants, peacocks and monkeys are everywhere. As in the rest of the palace, pragmatism blends harmoniously with aesthetics. Wooden benches, sculpted beams and columns plus Byzantine mosaic flooring all come together with perfect ease.

From the direction overlooking Oruba Street, I could see the manicured garden which only recently replaced the eroded, sand-flooded remnants of the palace’s golden age when the Baron had his little paradise decked out in imported rare plants and trees or so the legend goes. I could also spot the Palaces of Nubar Pasha and Sultan Hussein Kamel, as well as the splendid Basilique Church. From this vantage point it was less difficult to imagine the existence of that rumored secret tunnel in the basement where the servant quarters and the kitchen are found. In a hushed tone (visitors aren’t allowed down there) a custodian assures me that the tunnel is real, but that parts of it had caved in.

The final tier of the tower gives a panoramic view of the whole area. I could just picture the Baron overlooking his oasis and actually seeing the Pyramids, as people claim he did. From inside the tower you also get a chance to look more closely at the exuberance and magnitude of the sculptures you had seen from the outside. The amount of detail is remarkable; and the proximity to the imposing, life-size Hindu statues is rather humbling. et