Mr & Mrs Mahmoud Khalil Museum

Cairo

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In 2010 this museum gained global notoriety when art thieves nicked Van Gogh's Poppy Flowers (valued at US$50 million) right off the wall in broad daylight. The painting has yet to be recovered and the museum has been closed (ostensibly for renovations) ever since. If it has reopened by the time you're in town, the galleries of fine art here are definitely worth a visit, even if you didn’t come to Egypt to see 19th- and 20th-century European and Japanese art.

Mahmoud and the missus, Emiline Lock, hobnobbed with European artists at the turn of the last century and amassed an impressive collection: Delacroix, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet and more. The museum is just a few minutes’ walk south from the Cairo Sheraton.

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