Egypt's fifth president is only a stone's throw away from the palace, from which he and his administration are to run this country for four years, if not more. Just as the presidential plane has of late been released several times from its hangar for test flights, presidential palaces are being prepared to receive the new resident. When Mubarak was ousted in February last year one question that posed itself was: Will Egypt's next president opt for the same grandeur or will he follow a more modest way of living that would bring him closer to the people? There are speculations that, whether Mursi or Shafiq become president, neither is expected to dwell in the Orouba palace because of its association with Mubarak. He was the first president to take over what had been the grand Heliopolis Palace Hotel for presidential executive offices after it had been renovated for the purpose in the l980s. The hotel, built in l9l0, was world-acclaimed as one of the best tourist facilities in the region, comprising 400 rooms and 55 suites. Following the l952 revolution the premises were nationalised and, in the l970s, turned into headquarters for the Federation of the Arab Republics, which ran the short-lived political union between Egypt, Syria and Libya Most of Egypt's 28 presidential palaces that are located across the country constitute an architectural wealth, for which reason calls have been voiced since the January revolution for opening them to the public in their capacity as heritage owned by Egyptians. Allegations in the wake of the revolution about the looting of some presidential palaces prompted the formation of ad-hoc committees to make an inventory of 43,944 acquisitions in addition to annexed storehouses, eventually producing positive reports that the palaces are intact. According to sources at the Ministry of Agriculture, maintenance of gardens affiliated with presidential palaces has been stepped up, so that the stage would be set for the incoming head of state. Inventory committees have been assigned the task of checking the condition of botanical wealth especially given that some of these gardens, as for instance those at Qasr el-Qubba, contain trees that are more than 200 years old.
