The photographs below show Bab Sharki police station in 1912.
Bab Sharki means the Eastern Gate which until the nineteenth century could still be discerned within the ruinous Arab walls of the medieval town. The walls enclosed a much smaller city than ancient Alexandria whose eastern gate, the Gate of the Sun, lay much farther eastwards. The Canopic Way, the main thoroughfare of ancient Alexandria, ran east to west through the heart of the city from the Gate of the Sun to the Gate of the Moon. In modern times the Canopic Way has been known as the Rue Rosette, then the Rue Fuad and now, officially, Sharia Horreya, meaning Freedom Avenue - but Alexandrians as often as not still call it the Rue Fuad, named for the king who ruled Egypt until his death in 1936.
