-
Alexandria National Museum
The excellent Alexandria National Museum sets new benchmarks for summing up Alexandria's impressive past. With a small, thoughtfully selected and well-labelled collection singled out from Alexandria's other museums, it does a sterling job of relating the city's history from antiquity until the modern period. Housed in a beautifully restored Italianate villa, it stocks several thousand years of Alexandrian history, arranged chronologically over three cryogenically air-conditioned floors.
-
Antiquities Museum
In the Alexandria library's basement is the Antiquities Museum, containing some overspill from the Graeco-Roman Museum, including a fine Roman mosaic of a dog discovered when the foundations of the library were dug. Free high-tech PDA guides are available in English, Arabic and French.
-
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
While trying to find a fitting replacement for the original library of Alexandria might seem a Herculean task, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina has managed it with aplomb. Officially opened in 2002, and inspired by the grandeur of the original, this impressive piece of 20th-century architecture has firmly replanted the city back on the world cultural map. The original was founded by the first Ptolemy in the late 3rd century BC, shortly after the city itself, and was one of the greatest of all classical institutions.
-
Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa (Kom ash-Shuqqafa)
About five minutes' walk south of Pompey's Pillar are the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa (Kom ash-Shuqqafa). Discovered accidentally in 1900 when a donkey disappeared through the ground, these catacombs are the largest known Roman burial site in Egypt. This impressive feat of engineering was one of the last major works of construction dedicated to the religion of ancient Egypt.
Read more about Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa (Kom ash-Shuqqafa)
-
Cavafy Museum
The poet Cavafy spent the last 25 years of his life in a 2nd-floor apartment, above a ground-floor brothel, on the former rue Lepsius (now Sharia Sharm ash-Sheikh). With a Greek church (St Saba Church) around the corner and a hospital opposite, Cavafy thought this was the ideal place to live; somewhere that could cater for the flesh, provide forgiveness for sins and a place in which to die. The flat is now preserved as the Cavafy Museum, with two of the six rooms arranged as Cavafy kept them.
-
Cecil Hotel
Right in the middle of the broad Corniche is the legendary Cecil Hotel, overlooking Midan Saad Zaghloul. Built in 1930, it's an Alexandrian institution and a memorial to the city's belle époque, when guests included Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Winston Churchill, and the British Secret Service operated out of a suite on the 1st floor. The hotel was eternalised in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet .
-
Chatby Necropolis
The Chatby Necropolis is considered to be the oldest necropolis in Alexandria. Discovered in 1904, the burials here date from the 4th century BC, soon after the city's founding, and belong to the earliest generations of Alexandrians. Appropriately, if current archaeological thinking is correct, Alexander the Great may also have been interred here at one time.
-
Church of St Mark
Near the eastern end of Midan Tahrir, in a peaceful garden, is the Anglican Church of St Mark with memorials to British residents and soldiers.
-
Culturama
Culturama is an interactive show (15 to 30 minutes) portraying Egypt's history on nine screens.
-
Fish Market
For a city that devours more fish than a hungry seal, you'd expect to find a pretty impressive fish market - and Alexandria delivers. The Fish Market at the northern tip of Anfushi bustles daily with flapping seafood that's literally just been thrown off the boat. Here, overalled vendors belt out the prices of their wares, while ever-sceptical buyers prod the merchandise and ponder the quality of the catch of the day.
-
Advertisement
-
Fort Qaitbey
The Eastern Harbour is dominated by the fairy-tale perfect Fort Qaitbey. Built on a narrow peninsula by the Mamluk sultan Qaitbey in AD 1480, it sits on the remains of the legendary Pharos lighthouse.
-
Graeco-Roman Museum
As part of Alexandria's effort to spruce itself up, many of its prime tourist attractions are in the process of being renovated. Unfortunately, the wonderful Graeco-Roman Museum is currently one of them. Although restoration work is scheduled to be finished by 2009, regular delays and budget overruns mean that this might prove to be a lofty goal.
-
Mahmoud Said Museum
He might be little known outside his home country, but Mahmoud Said (1897-1964) was one of Egypt's finest 20th-century artists. A judge by profession, he moonlighted as a painter and became a key member of a group of sophisticates devoted to forging an Egyptian artistic identity in the 1920s and 1930s. Said's work has echoes of the past (some of his portraits bear resemblance to the Graeco-Roman Fayoum Portraits) but he also blended European and American influences.
-
Mamoura Beach
There are plenty of public and private beaches along Alexandria's waterfront, but the ones between the Eastern Harbour and Montazah are often crowded and very grubby. Mamoura Beach , is slightly better - it even has a few small waves rolling in. The local authorities are trying to keep this beach suburb exclusive by charging everyone who enters the area around £E5 ; but then there's a further fee of around £E20 to get onto the sand.
-
Manuscript Museum
Contains ancient manuscripts and antiquarian books, and a temporary art exhibition space.
-
Midan Orabi
Midan Orabi, which runs from Tahrir to the sea, was once the fine French Gardens.
-
Midan Tahrir
Midan Tahrir was laid out in 1830 as the centrepiece of Mohammed Ali's new look: Alexandria goes to Europe. The impressive statue on a plinth at the centre of the midan is Mohammed Ali on horseback. A recent clean up has done wonders to accentuate the fine architecture of the square's surrounding buildings.
-
Montazah Palace Gardens
Khedive Abbas Hilmy (1892-1914) built Montazah as his summer palace, a refuge when Cairo became too hot. Sited on a rocky bluff overlooking the sea, it's designed in a pseudo-Moorish style, which has been given a Florentine twist with the addition of a tower modelled on one at the Palazzo Vecchio. Now used by Egypt's president, the palace is off limits to the public but the surrounding lush groves and Montazah Palace Gardens, planted with pine and palms, are accessible.
-
Mosque of Abu Abbas al-Mursi
Built in 1943 on the site of an earlier mosque that covered the tomb of a 13th-century Muslim saint, this is a modern, but nonetheless impressive, example of Islamic architecture.
-
Mustafa Kamal Necropolis
Mustafa Kamal Necropolis has four tombs, two in mint condition, and is interesting for the Doric columns at their centre.
-
Advertisement
-
Necropolis of Anfushi
If you're keen on tombs, and who isn't, check out the Necropolis of Anfushi, with five tombs dating back to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. The two principal tombs contain some faded wall decoration intended to imitate marble and alabaster. Though not as eloquent as the catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa, the Anfushi tombs reiterate the way the Greeks of Alexandria assimilated Egyptian beliefs into their funerary practices.
-
Pharmacie Suisse
The area around Midan Ramla is full of mini time capsules of the city's cosmopolitan past - take a look in the Pharmacie Suisse, with its beautiful dark wood and glass cabinets painted with skull and crossbones and the warning 'substances toxique' .
-
Planetarium
A spherical structure looming on the outside plaza like the Death Star from Star Wars .
-
Pompey's Pillar
The massive 30m-high column, hewn from red Aswan granite, is known as Pompey's Pillar, looming over the debris of the glorious ancient settlement of Rhakotis, the original township from which Alexandria grew. For centuries the column has been one of the city's prime sights, a single shaft of tapered granite, 2.7m at its base and capped by a fine Corinthian capital.
-
Ras at-Tin Palace
Just beyond the Necropolis of Anfushi is the Ras at-Tin Palace, a centre of power during the first half of the 19th century when Mohammed Ali summered here. It's from here that King Farouk boarded his yacht and departed from Egypt after abdicating on 26 July 1956. It's now closed to the public.
