Sheikh Tawfik House

One of the most beautiful historical building of El Quseir is undoubtedly the Sheikh Tawfik House, belonging to the Chief of the Mosque, and recently restored. It is a distinguished piece of Islamic architecture characterized by a huge and well preserved  mashrabya  covering almost one third of its main façade. The house exemplifies one of the very successful efforts to re-use and transform an antique building into a hostel of six rooms on the upper floors and the reception space and a restaurant on the ground floor, conserving the architecture main features. This ancient house, located directly along the Cornish street overlooking the sea, renamed El Quseir Hotel is managed by Sheikh Tawfik’s nephew, Mustafa who is very proud of this project and very helpful with his clients.

The House: Through RECQ the Sheikh Tawfik House was rented and put under our control. The house has been closed for more than 20 years. It took us almost a year from the preliminary studies and renovation procedures till reusing, at the beginning of 1999. The aim of work was to put a model for renovation, adaptive-reuse and rehabilitation of one of Quseir houses. This will help in putting a future vision for integrated development of Quseir, taking into consideration different environmental and cultural factors and preserving the identity of the Quseir society. The project was financially supported from different public, governmental, international, and private
organizations (mainly Mr. Wilanburg the owner of Movenpick Hotel). We were able to create our own strategy of work that suits the location, nature of the building, and other different variables involved. At the beginning, we thought to reuse the house as: - An oriental restaurant or coffee. - Touristic offices for rental. - Or oriental shops. But since Quseir has a number of 4 and 5 stars hotels which suits only financially capable tourists, we agreed to adaptive-reuse the house as a 3 stars hotel to open other sectors of tourism in Quseir