When time stands still at a historic Cairo watch shop

Refaat Makary, a 58-year-old Egyptian watchmaker, repairing a watch at the Francis Papazian watchmaker's shop in the central Attaba district of Egypt's capital Cairo. Photo: AFP

Time seems to have stood still at Papazian's, an Armenian Egyptian watchmaker whose almost 120-year-old Cairo shop has withstood the decades, surviving political upheavals and urban transformations.

Sheltered from the hustle and bustle of the capital's unforgiving traffic and surrounded by street vendors in Attaba Square, the unassuming shop housed under the arcades of an old Haussmannian building is a time capsule of Cairo's rich cosmopolitan history.