As Cairo faces the bulldozer today, this project seeks to dig deeper into the history of the city as we know it, uncovering the processes through which it was shaped in the mid-nineteenth century by the Committee for the Conservation of Arab Art. The author delves into a previously unpublished archive of secret correspondence and reports, dating back to the early days of the conflict between urban development and heritage preservation. The book seeks to answer a central question: Which city are we talking about when we speak of Cairo? A city preserved from the Middle Ages, or a version of it, shaped and constructed by the restorers of the nineteenth century?