As protesters return to Midan al-Tahrir, a look at the area in front of the Egyptian Muesum in the days before automobiles, from this site. (Before it was Midan al-Tahrir, it was Midan Ismailiyya.) For more on the h8story of the square and its environs, see my "A Brief Biography of Tahrir Square"; also posts on the origin of the name Maspero; another on the man for whom Tahrir's Umar Makram mosque is named; and on the ugly 1970s raised walkway around the square.
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