Few places are as alive in the collective imagination as Egypt.
Egypt and North Africa have oocupied the image of otherness and constituted an outlet for romanticism in the Western mind especially after the onslaught of Enlightenment ideas in Middle Europie in the late eighteenth century. Egyptomania has not only been responsible for the obelisks in Western metorpolises from Rome to New YOrk City but also influenced at times architecture,music, furniture and textile design. Among ethnographers, anthropologists and cultural theorists Egypt is the contested battleground of the origin of Western civilization. The program will visit a great number of important historical monuments of these different periods and cultures and at the same time get familiar with indigenous rural architecture of the fellahins along the Nile or hte Berbers in the desert or the mountains. Residual layers of colonial architecture and modern architecture and urbanism in the larger metropolitan areas will be an additional focus of attention.