Institute for Arabic Music

King Fuad I replaced the old Oriental Music Club with an institute of his own in 1929, on Malika Nazli Street in Azbakeya, and the building was drawn by Ernesto Verrucci, the architect from the Marches who had been chief architect to the royal household since 1917 and carried the Ottoman title Bey. Wikidata puts the start of work at 1923; the Italian record of Verrucci’s practice dates the finished Oriental Music Institute to 1928, and the facade itself carries the Hijri year 1346, which ran from June 1927 to June 1928. Verrucci built it neo-Mamluk: a deep pointed iwan recess in a rectangular frame, an inscription band across the head, stepped crenellations along the parapet, a hanging lamp in the shadow of the arch and a ribbed stone dome behind. In 1932 the building housed the Cairo Congress of Arab Music, where European composers and Arab musicians spent a fortnight disagreeing about what Arab music was. It teaches music still.