June 6, 1933
More than two years after construction on it had begun, a bridge spanning a section of the Nile River in Egypt’s capital city of Cairo was officially opened. This bridge was inaugurated by King Fuad I (1868-1936), who served as ruler of Egypt from 1917 until his death in 1936. (He served as Sultan of Egypt between 1917 and 1922; starting in 1922, his formal title was King of Egypt and Sovereign of Nubia, the Sudan, Kordofan and Darfur.) The bridge was originally named after Fuad’s father, Ismail Pasha (1830-1895). From 1863 to 1879, Ismail was Khedive of Egypt and Sudan (a title replaced with Sultan of Egypt in 1914).
The Khedive Ismail Bridge was renamed the Qasr El Nil Bridge after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 led to the overthrow of King Farouk I (1920-1965), the son and successor of Fuad, and the subsequent abolishment of the country’s monarchy. “Qasr El Nil” — also commonly spelled “Kasr el Nil” — is Arabic for “Palace of the Nile.”
The Qasr El Nil Bridge remains in service today. It serves as a link between Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and the National Cultural Centre on the city’s island of Gezira in the Nile. The bridge’s key features include large bronze lion statues at each its approaches; these statues had been created by renowned French sculptor Henri Alfred Jacquemart (1824-1896). Measuring 6,338.6 feet (1,932 meters) in length, the Qasr El Nil Bridge is the seventh longest bridge in Africa.
Photo Credit: Mahomed Amarochan (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
For more information on the Qasr El Nil Bridge (originally called the Khedive Ismail Bridge), please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasr_El_Nil_Bridge and https://structurae.net/en/structures/kasr-el-nil-bridge
Transportation History 
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