Heritage Days 2019

The Kiosks of Alexandria and the Canal exhibition was produced for the 10th annual Alexandria Heritage Days event. The theme, based on the project to preserve Egypt’s French-language press launched in 2004 by the CEAlex (PFEnum), was twofold.

On the one hand, the aim was to present Alexandria’s French-language newspapers – their type, history, protagonists and readership – as heritage documents that bear witness to the city’s history. Through originals and multimedia supports, the exhibition presented periodicals covering the following three major periods: 1850-1900: the beginnings; the first half of the 20th century: the golden age (magazines, school journals, newsletters from French-speaking schools, legal and judicial press, community newspapers) and 1945-1960.

We also wanted to participate in the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of the Suez Canal as part of the Egypt-France Year, by illustrating the Suez Canal through copies of the French-language press and interviews with former residents of the Canal Zone. These latter had been collected as part of the «Oral Memories of the Suez Canal » project run by the CEAlex in partnership with the Association du souvenir de Ferdinand de Lesseps et du canal de Suez.

The exhibition ran from 10 November 2019 to 12 January 2020 at the Institut Français in Alexandria.