This Downtown Cairo Pharmacy is Reminiscent of an Alchemist Lab

In the 20th century, London-based pharmacy Stephenson brought its imported wood and individually brewed antidotes and set up shop on Downtown Cairo’s heavily trodden streets. The pharmacy adopted an alchemist approach to science, brewing all of the medicine inhabiting its glass cabinets in-house.

Today, Agzakhana Stephenson has been passed down to the heir of Dr Ehsan Samnan, a dedicated pharmacist who took over the pharmacy in the late 1930s, but was intent on preserving the space’s potion-brewing integrity. Curious wanderers as well as hurried shoppers can now stop by for a breath of the pharmacy’s aged air and stacked potion bottles.