Alexandria’s old-world charm lives on in its khawagat cafés

Athineos became a stage for political debates and arguments, especially during the monarchy, when the government would relocate to Alexandria in the summer. Wafd Party ministers, such as Fouad Serageddin, or royalist pashas would drink and eat there. Although the café's role as a political salon faded after the 1952 Revolution, it remained a favoured destination for many Alexandrian and Egyptian intellectuals, including Cavafy. The Athens-infused ambience inspired him to write verses there.

Another was Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, whose celebrated novel Miramar drew from the life of a Greek woman who owned the hotel in the small Venezia building (today the Miramar building), adjacent to Athineos. Today, the café still retains a measure of its old splendour, albeit updated, but the conversations once heard in Mediterranean tongues and the strains of classical music have ceased. Still, its ancient Athenian spirit endures, including in its massive round columns and the Greek motifs adorning the tops of its walls.

Trianon's charm

The story of Trianon Café began in 1905, near Athineos, when the Greek Giorgos Perlis decided to establish Petit Trianon, a patisserie and café. In 1937, he partnered with the brothers Andreas and Konstantinidis Drikos, owners of Grand Trianon. This made Trianon one of the most famous and important cafés in the city, drawing many of Alexandria's well-known figures at the time, while also serving as a venue for the big family celebrations of the city's elite. The partnership between Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon only came to an end in 1970, with the death of the owners. Soon after, it was bought by Egyptian partners: the Hadari family, George Louka, and Samir Boulos.

Trianon is an old café with a distinctive design, from its antique wooden flooring to the walls and ceilings where wood is laid out haphazardly, giving the place a warm, lived-in feel. Its spacious interior allows for privacy between tables. Paintings of dancers and Eastern courtesans adorn the walls, clearly influenced by Edmund Dulac's illustrations of One Thousand and One Nights. Elegant white curtains hang over the café's windows, which overlook the seafront tramline and the famous statue of Saad Zaghloul. When a modern yellow tram passes, those seated near the windows are reminded of the iconic old Alexandria trams.

Classy clientele

Its unique design makes Trianon feel like a warm, tranquil space detached from the outside world, not unlike a museum. Much of the restaurant's furniture is antique. The large black piano at the entrance to the dining hall dates to 1911 (Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat's daughter reportedly played it whenever she dined there). Naguib Mahfouz was said to have worked on his film scripts there, while writer Tawfiq al-Hakim had a close bond with the café, mentioning it in his memoir Prison of Life. Others who sipped coffee and wrote poetry at Trianon included Abdel Rahman al-Abnoudi and Amal Dunqul, while the Greek poet and cultural attaché in Egypt, Kostis Moskof, also came to Trianon to write whenever he was in Alexandria.

The café keeps the signatures of its visitors in elegant ledgers that preserve the memory of their stop. Among them are Queen Sofia of Spain (herself of Greek origin), Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki bin Abdulaziz, Sadat's wife Jehan, the surgeon Magdi Yacoub, the chemist Ahmed Zewail, Egypt's Princess Fawzia, Queen Nariman (the second wife of King Farouk) and her husband Adham al-Naqib, plus the autographs of stars actors and actresses such as Laila Eloui, Lebleba, Yousra, Mahmoud Morsi, and Ahmed Zaki.

The Trianon Station al-Raml branch remains the most famous of Alexandria's Trianon cafés and Egyptians still flock there, as do nostalgic Greeks who were born and raised in Alexandria but left as children after nationalisation. Foreign visitors familiar with Alexandria's history and landmarks also include it on their itinerary.

Délices debuts

Just a few steps from Trianon sits its neighbour, Délices. With multiple entrances and façades onto Saad Zaghloul Street and the Chamber of Commerce Street, these are two of the city's legendary landmarks. The story of Délices Café stretches back to 1907, when the Greek confectioner Klovas Moustakas began trading. Word soon spread of his delicious baked goods, and both foreigners and Egyptians encouraged him to expand, which he did, introducing candied almonds, chocolates, cakes, éclairs, and ice cream in various flavours, some of which he invented.

By 1922, Moustakas established Délices, a café that quickly became the city's premier patisserie. Its reputation soon reached the royal palace, which commissioned him to bake the coronation cake for King Farouk in 1937, followed by the wedding cake for Farouk's marriage to Queen Farida in 1938. It grew from a small patisserie and café into a large café-restaurant, fuelled by the fame of its pastries, coffee, and beverages.

Naguib Mahfouz visited, reading newspapers and books with a cup of Turkish coffee, before leaving with sweets to take home. After the 1952 Revolution, Gamal Abdel Nasser drank coffee there with his senior officials, as did his (later) presidential successor, Anwar al-Sadat, and novelist Tawfiq al-Hakim, alongside actors during the summer seasons of Alexandria's theatre, including Adel Imam and Farid Shawqi.

The design of Délices combines the intimacy of the past with touches of the present. The sign bearing the café's name in Latin script is distinctively aged. The owners have wisely preserved the spirit of the past, dedicating a small area as a museum, displaying cash registers, typewriters, the café's first telephone, and its early menus. The oldest were written in Arabic and French (today's menus are in Arabic and English) and featured a variety of sweets, drinks, types of coffee, baked goods, and sandwiches with cheeses and different fillings, both Egyptian and Greek. Today's menus still include Greek specialities such as baklava and knafeh.

Reflections of an age

Anyone reflecting on the foreign cafés of Alexandria might ask if they hold a symbolism greater than that of old clubs whose history is celebrated. In places like Cairo and Beirut, cafés have moved beyond their traditional role as places to drink coffee, to become stages for political, social and cultural life, witnessing the passage of time, incubating human interaction. They sit at the crossroads of cultures.

Alexandria's cafés were not always hotbeds of political or cultural discussion (unlike somewhere such as Café Riche in Cairo, for instance). Instead, the Alexandrian café remained neutral, more akin to an open social club where one might encounter politicians and intellectuals without it ever becoming their permanent base. It is as though Alexandrian cafés were built for a deeper, more enduring purpose.

The foreign cafés of Alexandria are living proof of their owners' intertwining with the city that immortalised their names. They are bastions, guarding the city's stories. Around their tables, people of different nationalities, languages and religions gathered, bringing their dreams to Alexandria and living together peacefully. This spirit of coexistence, which spread throughout the city, was manifested most clearly in its cafés, which welcomed every stratum and stranger.

That spirit lingered even after Alexandria's cosmopolitan age ended and most of its non-Egyptian residents returned to their homelands. These cafés remain to this day, still demonstrating an enduring ability to bring people of all nations together in this universal city. These cafés are a parallel memory to that of the city itself. Still serving coffee, they hark back to a more innocent, peaceful, refined, and tolerant era.