DIANA MARKET

A dusty passageway of time travel — where forgotten things whisper, and nostalgia comes wrapped in cellophane.

Tucked between the chaos of Downtown’s arteries lies Diana Market — not a place you’d find on a tourist map, but one that every collector knows by scent, feel, and instinct.

It’s not grand or curated. It's tight, cluttered, dimly lit. But to me, it’s sacred ground.

My journey as a sketcher and storyteller is deeply entangled with objects — the old, the overlooked, the storied. And Diana Market has always felt like a portal.

Here, I’ve held vintage metro tickets, vinyls with handwritten notes, postcards that never found their destination, and books bearing the fingerprints of Cairo’s forgotten readers.

What I love about Diana is that it’s not just a market — it’s a collage of the city's soul.

Each item feels like a relic rescued from the jaws of modernity. When I sketch, I often think of these pieces: how they carry time, how they survived, and how they still belong.

This sketch is my tribute to the unsung curators who run these stalls — archivists in denim and dust — and to the thrill of finding meaning in the mundane.

Diana Market isn’t just where I buy old things. It’s where I remember why I draw.