Garbage City and Saint Samaan Cave Church and City of the Dead

In this tour you will explore an area known as “Garbage City, ” which is a slum settlement at the base of Mokattam Hill on the outskirts of Cairo, and inhabited by the Coptic Christians, a community of garbage collectors who make their living collecting and recycling 17, 000 tons of garbage produced by Cairo’s 20 million residents.

Within the Garbage City seven churches and chapels are hidden within a series of caves. While walking the chaotic streets of Garbage City, you will understand in a small degree how their economy moves. Families specialize in a particular type of garbage.
Also in this tour you will explore the City of the Dead, where the deceased take up residency among the living. It is a Muslim Cemetery with multiple tombs. A fair number of these tombs are occupied by families who either wish to stay near their deceased relatives or have squatted there in order to escape poverty .

A half-day guided tour of Cairo’s “Garbage City”—Manshiyat Nasser Learn how, without an official recycling system, the community handles waste from 20 million people Private tours include front-door hotel pickup and drop-off, plus snacks and water Skip the crowded tourist track and spend time in one of the city’s most unusual locations

The village is notable for having nearly every space of it covered in garbage, including the streets and rooftops of the settlement. These piles of garbage are the result of the Cairo Metropolitan Area having never established an efficient garbage collecting system, despite having a population of nearly 20 million. The inhabitants of Manshiyat Nasser, mostly Coptic Christians, have filled this gap for the past 70 years. These informal garbage collectors, called the Zabbaleen or “Garbage people,“ collect the garbage of Cairo’ Read more