St Mary’s Hanging Churchالكنيسة المعلقة

St Mary’s Hanging Church rises above the Roman towers of the Babylon Fortress in Old Cairo, with its nave built over a former gate—hence the sense of being suspended. Founded in the 3rd–4th cc. and reshaped through the medieval period, it became a defining shrine of Coptic Cairo and, in the 11th–14th cc., a seat of the Coptic Orthodox pope. Icons and finely carved wooden screens preserve a Christian visual language that endured through centuries of changing rule.