Mena House

History

The Mena House hotel was built in 1884-1886 at the end of Pyramid Road. In 1883 Frederick and Jessie Head had acquired a young British couple, the former hunting estate of the Khedive. However, they soon sold to the British pair Hugh and Ethel Locke -King, in 1886 opened his Mena hotel. It was named after the Pharaoh Menes. The first manager of the new luxury hotel was the Austrian Baron Ernst Rodakowski. In February 1890, the Mena Hotel opened the first hotel swimming pool in Egypt. The owner couple -serviced but too generous and has not been economically very successful. 1896, therefore, it came to the sale to Emil Weckel and an investor named Schick. Rodakowski sold two years later its Shares to 45,000 pounds Sterling. In December 1899, the golf course was opened in 1904 and sold Schick Weckel George Nungovich, an Egyptian self-made millionaire. In the First and Second World War, Australian troops were billeted in the hotel, 1943, a major conference of the Western Allies and Chiang Kai- shek took place here.

In 1964, the management of the nationalized hotel was taken over by the Oberoi group and started in 1972 a major expansion. In 1978 the garden tract of over 200 additional rooms was created. The latest renovations took place in 2007 /08.

Since 1 January 2013, the Mena House is no longer managed by the Oberoi group.

Famous guests

Politicians, royals and celebrities included from the beginning to the visitors and residents of the Mena House. Examples include the Prince of Wales (1889 ), Arthur Conan Doyle ( 1894), Winston Churchill ( multiple times, from 1914). King Farouk was also a frequent guest. President Richard Nixon visited the hotel in 1974, 1979, in the vicinity of the Camp David Agreement Menachem Begin lived in suite 908, Jimmy Carter in the Churchill Suite and Anwar Sadat in the Montgomery Suite. Agatha Christie Also, Roger Moore, Cecil B. DeMille, Charlton Heston, Frank Sinatra and Charlie Chaplin were the guests of the house.