The 110-Year-Old Cairo Home Nevine El Gendy Continues to Shape

Nevine El Gendy lives in a 110-year-old Cairo house where the past is everywhere, but rarely kept at a distance. Its high ceilings and interconnected rooms have the kind of architectural character that make visitors imagine Abdel Halim Hafez stepping onto the balcony or Faten Hamama appearing in the next room. For El Gendy, however, preserving the character of the house does not mean preserving it in place. It means living with it.

The house has come together slowly, through objects collected across different parts of her life. A chandelier from her family home, brought from Gaza by her father years ago, hangs above the dining table. A dress she wore at three months old sits among the things she keeps within sight. Old Banque Misr share certificates have been framed and are waiting to find their place above a wardrobe. Contemporary paintings sit alongside traditional Egyptian furniture. Nothing is arranged to belong exclusively to the past.

“I don't want to finish the house,” El Gendy says. Instead, she lets it develop through use. When she first moved in, the rooms opened into one another, and some were still waiting to be worked on. A table in the living space began as a temporary solution, with one tray simply placed on top of another random stand. Eventually, she decided she liked it that way.For El Gendy, this is part of understanding a home. “I sense the space more and understand its needs better when I'm actually in it,” she explains. Rather than deciding everything before moving in, she allows the house to tell her what it needs over time.

That same approach extends to the things inside it. Her Limoges dinner set, for instance, lives in the kitchen rather than being reserved for the dining room or special occasions. It is what the family eats from every day. Beautiful objects, in her view, become more meaningful through use. “Let's enjoy our lives, live with the things we love. Eat off them, and feed our loved ones off them," she tells SceneHome.

Her home's Egyptian character comes as much from the way El Gendy lives in it as from its age, with inherited objects, artwork and furniture accumulating alongside the ordinary routines of family life. Even the decision to have one bathroom reflects that instinct. She liked the idea of everyone living together and talking rather than retreating into separate spaces.

The house is still unfinished. One room needs more work, objects continue to find new homes, and arrangements that began as temporary may yet become permanent. But that incompleteness is precisely what keeps the house feeling lived in. For El Gendy, a home does not become complete when every corner has been resolved. It becomes familiar through the process of living there.