A first look at Villa Fayoum, Egypt’s artiest guesthouse

The small village of Tunis sits on the southern shore of Qarun Lake on the edge of the Fayoum Oasis in Egypt. If you game Cairo’s infamously snarly traffic well, you can reach it from the city centre in less than two hours. But Fayoum exists entirely outside Cairo’s gravitational pull. Its palm groves extend miles south from Qarun’s shores in a cloak of dusty emerald; to the lake’s north is desert as far as the eye can see. Houses with rammed-earth walls and domed roofs, surrounded by tousled gardens of hibiscus and bougainvillea, line the unpaved roads. The prevailing atmosphere is sleepy, occasionally interrupted by donkeys and camels thup-thupping along, or the rumble of a motorbike or tuk tuk. Buffalo graze in open fields.  

Cairenes have long taken advantage of Fayoum’s proximity: Tunis village is particularly sought-after for its lakeside situation and the abundance of colourful pottery for which Fayoum is internationally renowned. Soon, though, travellers from much further afield might be marking this oasis on the map thanks to the opening this month of a former artist’s residence as Villa Fayoum. 

The guesthouse is the creation of Florian Amereller and Zeina Aboukheir, the current and former owner of Luxor’s Al Moudira Hotel, a cult destination that has been open since 2002 and under Amereller’s auspices has expanded to include private villas, new restaurants, artisan workshops and a working farm. Like Moudira, Villa Fayoum offers impeccable styling, a hodgepodge of gorgeous antiques, farm-sourced food and pool pavilions, but within a smaller and more intimate environment across just a dozen suites.

Amereller, a lawyer by trade, has long had the property bug; more recently he has succumbed to the hospitality one. “I always saw tremendous potential for a niche travel product in Egypt,” he says. “Small, with strong reference to the architecture, design and craftsmanship of the country.”  

Lebanese-born Aboukheir, who built Moudira over the course of more than 20 years on a semi-barren parcel of desert on the Nile’s western bank, sold to Amereller in 2022. But she has continued to collaborate closely with him on the design and ambience of his projects, which include a collection of serviced apartments in Cairo’s Immobilia building and two restored dahabiyas that cruise the Nile between Luxor and Aswan. Amereller first saw the house in Fayoum two years ago and was won over by its “unique bones and perfect location”, along with some design flourishes left by its former owner that have been retained – a set of carved motifs decorating the salon’s walls, and some panes of beautifully coloured glass. The restoration brought in several new additions, including two first-floor suites with private tiled terraces, a pool with its own pavilion, and a light-saturated winter garden whose centrepiece is an antique Ottoman fireplace that glitters with multicoloured Izmir tiles.

The house, says Aboukheir, already had “a gorgeous palette of sunlight and earth”, so she instructed her team of artisans to elaborate on that chromatic path. The faded green of one bathroom is the shade of leaves in the garden at midday. The sandstone walls of the public spaces recall the stretch of desert beyond the lake; in a few bathrooms and suites it’s paired with a wash of palest blue – the sky where it meets land.

“Zeina is not an interior designer and her ‘jobs’ are never finished,” says Amereller of their collaborations. “We buy the most amazing antiques, store them, restore them, reallocate them.” Between them they’re on a first-name basis with nearly every antique and brocante dealer in Cairo and Alexandria. “She is a true artist,” he continues. “Zeina adds the soul to the premises, which I would struggle to do. She has a feeling for effortlessly combining styles, breaking some rules and not being caught up by the mainstream.” 

At Villa Fayoum, Aboukheir has put together what she calls “a curation of eras” with an emphasis on Egyptian craft. Ornate Victorian beds, some brass and some carved wood, anchor the rooms with an air of permanence. Midcentury Arabesque tables, chairs and sideboards add “a sophisticated, kind of rhythmic, edge”. Lithographs and vintage photography put things in historical context. Throughout, the bedding and table linens are all produced by Malaika, the Cairo-based design firm co-founded by Margarita Andrade, Amereller’s wife.

The former artists’ residence is now arguably the most beautiful place to stay in the oasis. But Fayoum, while charming, isn’t necessarily for the first-timer to the country. Being part of upper Egypt, it does have its own clutch of archaeological sites, where Romans, Copts and Greeks left their marks alongside those of the pharaohs – the 2nd century BC Medinet Madi site is thought to be the only intact Middle Kingdom temple complex; parts of it pay homage to the crocodile god Sobek, whose cult centre was here. A bit further out into the desert is Wadi al-Hitan, where fossil remains of archaeoceti – proto-whales, a species almost 50 million years old – are scattered across the sand. But Luxor it isn’t; and as oases go it doesn’t match the cachet of Siwa, that mystical (and much less accessible) one far to the west. 

What is unique to Fayoum is its artisan heritage, specifically its pottery, whose naif designs and richly toned glazes have earned it highly collectable status around the world. Tunis village is considered its pottery capital, thanks in large part to the Swiss-born artist Evelyne Porret, who moved here in the late 1980s and established the Ptah Association (now called the Fayoum Pottery School). The school has educated a new generation of potters, some of whom – such as Mahmoud Yousef, who went on to study art at university in Cairo, and Rawya Abd El-Kader, the first woman to own a gallery here – have studios in courtyards and bungalows along Tunis’s quiet main street. Guests of Villa Fayoum will have special access to the school itself, should they wish to test their skill at the wheel.

And, as at Moudira, they will eat well. Chef Gioconda Scott – who opened The Moudira Farm Kitchen last year – is creating the menus and training the chefs for Villa Fayoum, whose kitchens will be provisioned by local suppliers and Moudira’s fields. Scott, who grew up in Andalusia and has done residences with Francis Mallmann in Uruguay and at Kamal Mouzawak’s Tawlet in Beirut, has mastered a repertory of clean, fresh, Mediterranean-meets-Middle East flavours. Menus will change according to what’s at market; a wood-fired pizza oven is on its way.

The finished villa “looks very nice”, Amereller allows, but he believes the secret to elucidating a place’s soul is letting it live a while: “A softer opening period of a few months is key; to change, add, complete and refine.” Moudira is a hotel befitting a “destination”, which Luxor is; Villa Fayoum will be something different – a dozy weekend escape, a place to browse a few artisan workshops, watch egrets skimming the lake, read, write and hit repose. Less Egyptian pomp; more Egyptian pastoral. 

From $375 full-board or $3,500 a day full-board for the entire villa, egyptbeyond.com