After years of rumors, negotiations and objections, Alexandrians awoke on September 19 to the news that the villa that had inspired one of the most acclaimed works of world literature had been demolished. The destruction of this architectural gem of Egypt’s second city is just one in a long line of demolitions contributing to the systematic erasure of the city’s cultural legacy. With its belle époque architecture, Villa Ambron, once housed famed author Lawrence Durrell whose celebrated tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet, has been considered to depict the now lost ‘cosmopolitan’ flavor of the city. The site where the villa used to stand is located on El-Ma’amoun street in the now mostly lower-middle class to the working-class area of Moharam Bek. Durell, together with Eve Cohen, a Jewish woman from Alexandria who was to become his wife and inspiration for the character of Justine in the Quartet’s first volume bearing the same name, moved into the upper floor of the house with their friends in the early 1940s amid an escalating World War. In the years after the war, and particularly following the power grab by Gamal Abdel Nasser and his efforts to nationalize…
Historic Alexandria Villa Demolished Amid Continued Erasure of City’s Cultural Heritage
September 26, 2017
