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Mediterranean Coast

Egypt’s northern coastline runs for 500km along Mediterranean shores. Its sandy beaches and turquoise-hued sea lure floods of Egyptians here during summer and, in recent years, a number of sprawling resorts have been built facing these crystal waters. Most travellers, however, make a beeline straight to the once-great port city of Alexandria. Eulogised through the centuries, this faded old dame of a metropolis is still by far Egypt's most atmospheric city. Alexandria's fresh sea air, fantastic seafood, ancient history and crumbling gems of belle époque buildings give it a spirit distinctly different from that of Cairo.

Outside the old stomping grounds of Alexander the Great and Queen Cleopatra, foreign visitors are rarely spotted. To delve deeper into this region, take a pilgrimage to the sobering, beautifully kept WWII war memorials of El Alamein. Or amble the souq streets of Rosetta, edged by Ottoman-era architecture and brimming with time-stood-still ambience.

Top attractions

These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Mediterranean Coast.

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Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Alexandria’s ancient library was one of the greatest of all classical institutions, and while replacing it might seem a Herculean task, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina manages this with aplomb. Opened in 2002, this impressive piece of modern architecture is a deliberate attempt to rekindle the brilliance of the original centre of learning and culture. The complex has become one of Egypt’s major cultural venues and a stage for numerous international performers, and is home to a collection of brilliant museums. The building takes the form of a gigantic angled discus embedded in the ground, evoking a second sun rising out of the Mediterranean. The granite exterior walls are carved with letters, pictograms, hieroglyphs and symbols from more than 120 different human scripts. Inside, the jaw-dropping main reading room can accommodate eight million books and 2500 readers under its sloping roof, with windows specially designed to let sunlight flood in but keep out rays that might harm the collection. In addition to the very impressive main reading room, there are four specialised libraries (a children's library for ages six to 11; a youth library for ages 11 to 17; a multimedia library; a library for the blind) and a huge array of other diversions. There are four permanent museums, a planetarium, a conference centre, a range of temporary and permanent exhibitions, and a full schedule of events. To fully explore this very worthy attraction, you should allot half a day; to just gape at the astounding main reading room and do a tour, you’ll need an hour or so. The library is right on the seafront, but the main entrance and ticket office are at the back of the complex. All bags must be checked here, though you can bring your camera and wallet inside. Two of the museums inside have individual entrance tickets; these are bought within the building, next to the museums themselves. The Museums The Antiquities Museum has a well-curated exhibition of artefacts cherry-picked from sites across Egypt that romp from the Pharaonic through to the Greek and Roman periods, and into the Byzantine and Islamic eras. There's a fine collection of 2nd-century coloured funerary masks, intricately decorated mummy cases and faience blue shabti (funerary statues), and some gorgeous Greek-era statuary. Afterwards, head to the Manuscript Museum, which holds a small but beautifully displayed collection of ancient texts and antiquarian books, including a copy of the only surviving scroll from Alexandria's ancient library. Next door is the wonderful Impressions of Alexandria Exhibition, which does a sterling job of documenting the city's long history through drawings, maps and early photographs. From here, explore the Bibliotheca's exhibition halls which showcase the work of contemporary Arabic artists and are also home to a fascinating heritage collection with gorgeously displayed textiles, folk art and Arabic science equipment from the medieval period. The World of Shadi Abdel Salam (a cult film director, script writer and set designer born in Alexandria) shows a display of his wonderful drawings of film sets. His most famous film, The Night of Counting the Years ( Al Momia in Arabic), and other films are shown regularly in the afternoon. There’s also a video program on Egyptian history called the Culturama, displayed on nine screens. The Planetarium is a futuristic neon-lit sphere, looming on the plaza in front of the library like a mini Death Star from Star Wars. It shows 3D films focused on space exploration, the natural world and Egyptian history, all aimed at educating children, on a rotating schedule (see website). It also has an Exploratorium, as well as the History of Science Museum underneath, also targeted at groups of Egyptian school children. The museum covers the contribution to science of three key historic eras – Pharaonic Egypt, Hellenistic Alexandria and the Islamic era. Tours of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina run every 45 minutes in English between 11.45am and 4.30pm Sunday to Thursday and on Saturdays from 12.10 to 3pm. Note that while the library has a wide range of kid-friendly activities and diversions, little ones under the age of six are not admitted to the library room. Helpfully, day care is available during opening hours.
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Alexandria National Museum
This excellent museum sets a high benchmark with its summary of Alexandria’s past. Housed in a beautifully restored Italianate villa, the small but thoughtfully selected and well-labelled collection does a sterling job of relating the city’s history from antiquity until the modern period. Look out especially for the beautiful tanagra – terracotta statues of Greek women – and the discoveries found underwater in the Mediterranean. The museum's ground floor is dedicated to Graeco-Roman times, and highlights include a sphinx and other sculptures found during underwater excavations at Aboukir. Look for the small statue of the Greek god Harpocrates with a finger to his lips (representing silence); he was morphed from the original Egyptian god Horus and is also connected to Eros. Also check out the beautiful statue of a Ptolemaic queen, with Egyptian looks and a Hellenistic body. The basement covers the Pharaonic period with finds from all over Egypt. Note the false doors, which were the link between the living and the dead, and the reserve heads that were placed near the corpse as a substitute for the head in the afterlife. The top floor displays artefacts from the Byzantine, Islamic and modern periods, including coins, Ottoman weapons and jewels. Don’t miss the exquisite silver shield. Early coexistence of Alexandria’s major religions is represented by a carved wooden cross encircled by a crescent.
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Mahmoud Said Museum
Mahmoud Said (1897–1964) was one of Egypt’s finest 20th-century artists, even though he is little known outside his country. 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 '30s. This museum presents about 40 of his works in the beautiful Italianate villa in which he once lived. You will need to show a passport to get in. One of the rooms in the museum is dedicated to female nudes, quite surprising considering the more conservative mood that Alexandria is in today. Said loved to portray various women and their sensuous bodies, adding simple accessories such as headscarves, jewellery or bracelets to celebrate their ‘plebeian’ Egyptian beauty. Some of his works have recently sold for millions of dollars in European auction houses. From the San Stefano tram stop (line 2), cross the tracks and go up the steps to the raised road (opposite the huge mall). Go right and Sharia Mohammed Pasha Said is a short distance away on the left.
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Catacombs of Kom Ash Shuqqafa
Discovered accidentally in 1900 when a donkey disappeared through the ground, these catacombs make up the largest-known Roman burial site in Egypt and one of the last major works of construction dedicated to the religion of ancient Egypt. Demonstrating Alexandria’s hallmark fusion of Pharaonic and Greek styles, the architects used a Graeco-Roman approach. The catacombs consist of three tiers of tombs and chambers cut into bedrock to a depth of 35m (the bottom level is flooded and inaccessible). Entry is through a spiral staircase; the bodies of the dead would have been lowered on ropes down the centre of this circular shaft. The staircase leads off to a rotunda with a central well piercing down into the gloom of the flooded lower level. When the catacombs were originally constructed in the 2nd century AD, probably as a family crypt, the rotunda would have led only to the triclinium (to your left) and principal tomb chamber (straight ahead). But over the 300 years that the tomb was in use, more chambers were hacked out until it had developed into a hive that could accommodate more than 300 corpses. The triclinium was a banqueting hall where grieving relatives paid their last respects with a funeral feast. Mourners, who returned to feast after 40 days and again on each anniversary, reclined on the raised benches at the centre of the room around a low table. Back in the rotunda, head down the stairs to the principal tomb, the centrepiece of the catacombs. Here, an antechamber with columns and pediment leads through to an inner sanctum. The typical Alexandrian-style decoration shows an odd synthesis of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman funerary iconography. The doorway to the inner chamber is flanked by figures representing Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, but he is dressed as a Roman legionary and sports a serpent’s tail representative of Agathos Daimon, a Greek divinity. From the antechamber a couple of short passages lead to a large U-shaped chamber lined with loculi – the holes in which the bodies were placed. After the body (or bodies, as many of the loculi held more than one) had been placed inside, the small chamber was sealed with a plaster slab. Back up in the rotunda, four other passageways lead off to small clusters of tombs. One of these gives access to an entirely different complex, known as the Hall of Caracalla. This had its own staircase access (long-since caved in) and has been joined to Kom Ash Shuqqafa, which it pre-dates, by industrious tomb robbers who hacked a new passageway. Beside the hole in the wall, a painting shows the mummification of Osiris and the kidnapping of Persephone by Hades, illustrating ancient Egyptian and Greek funerary myths. As impressive as all this sounds, if you’ve been to the tombs on Luxor’s west bank, Kom Ash Shuqqafa will surely leave you underwhelmed: most of the walls are unadorned, nearly all the paintings having faded to invisibility. You can easily walk to the catacombs from Pompey's Pillar, which is also located in Carmous. If walking from the pillar, start from in front of the ticket office. With your back to the entrance, take the small street to the right, slightly uphill and away from the tram tracks. Follow this street for several hundred metres past a small mosque on the left; the entrance to the catacombs is in the next block on your left. A taxi from Midan Saad Zaghloul to the catacombs costs around LE35.
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Pompey’s Pillar & the Temple of Serapeum
A massive 30m column looms over the debris of the glorious ancient settlement of Rhakotis, the original township from which Alexandria grew. Known as Pompey’s Pillar, for centuries the column, hewn from red Aswan granite, has been one of the city’s prime sights: a single, tapered shaft, 2.7m at its base and capped by a fine Corinthian capital. The column rises out of the sparse ruins of the Temple of Serapeum, a magnificent structure that stood here in ancient times. The column was named by travellers who remembered the murder of the Roman general Pompey by Cleopatra’s brother, but an inscription on the base (presumably once covered with rubble) announces that it was erected in AD 291 to support a statue of the emperor Diocletian. Underneath the column, steps lead downward to the ruins of the great temple of Serapis, the hybrid Greek and Egyptian god of Alexandria. Also here was the ‘daughter library’ of the Great Library of Alexandria, which was said to have contained copies and overflow of texts. These scrolls could be consulted by anyone using the temple, making it one of the most important intellectual and religious centres in the Mediterranean. The temple was attacked during the Jewish Revolt in AD 115–117, but it was the Christians who launched a final assault on pagan intellectuals in AD 391 and destroyed the Serapeum and its library, leaving just the lonely pillar standing. The site is now very forlorn, little more than rubble pocked by trenches and holes, with a couple of narrow shafts from the Serapeum to explore below, a few sphinxes (originally from Heliopolis) and a surviving Nilometer (a structure used to measure and record the level of the Nile in ancient times). The pillar on top is the only ancient monument remaining whole and standing in Alexandria today. The guards can be slightly pushy here. When taking a taxi here, ask for it by the Arabic name, Amoud Al Sawari. The fare should be LE30 to LE35 from Midan Saad Zaghloul.
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Kom Al Dikka
Kom Al Dikka was a well-off residential area in Graeco-Roman times, with lovely villas, bathhouses and a theatre. The area was known at the time as the Park of Pan, a pleasure garden where citizens of Alexandria could indulge in various lazy pursuits. Although the ruins aren't terribly impressive in scale, they remain a superbly preserved ode to the days of the centurion and include the 13 white-marble terraces of the only Roman amphitheatre found in Egypt. This site was discovered in 1967 when foundations were being laid for an apartment building on a site known unceremoniously as Kom Al Dikka – 'Mound of Rubble'. In the same complex is the Villa of the Birds, a wealthy urban dwelling dating to the time of Hadrian (AD 117–138). Despite being redecorated at least four times in antiquity before being destroyed by fire in the 3rd century AD, its floor mosaic of pigeons, peacocks, quails, parrots and water hens remains astonishingly well preserved. Additional mosaics feature a panther and a stylised flower design known as a rosette. Excavations continue to uncover more in the area. In early 2010 the ruins of a Ptolemaic-era temple were uncovered along with statues of gods and goddesses, including a number of the cat goddess Bastet.
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Fort Qaitbey
The Eastern Harbour is dominated by the bulky walls of Fort Qaitbey, built on a narrow peninsula over the remains of the legendary Pharos lighthouse by the Mamluk sultan Qaitbey in 1480. Finely restored, it has a warren of rooms to explore, and the walk here is just as rewarding. From Midan Ramla it's a 30- to 45-minute stroll along the Corniche with spectacular harbour views along the way. The Pharos lighthouse, which had been in use for some 17 centuries, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1303 and lay in ruins for more than 100 years before Qaitbey ordered the fortification of the city’s harbour. Material from the fallen Pharos was reused, and if you get close to the outer walls, you can pick out some great pillars of red granite, which in all likelihood came from the ancient lighthouse. Other parts of the ancient building are scattered around the nearby seabed. If you don't feel like a seaside walk, take yellow tram 15 from Midan Ramla to get here or flag down a microbus along the Corniche. A taxi should cost LE10 to LE15.
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Mosque of Abu Abbas Al Mursi
This stately mosque was built over the tomb of a revered 13th-century Sufi saint, Abu Abbas Al Mursi, from Murcia in Spain. Several successive mosques have been built and rebuilt on the site. Though the current structure is modern, it’s still an attractive octagonal building, with a soaring central tower and an interior decorated with eye-catching Islamic mosaics, tiling and woodwork. Al Mursi is one of the four master saints in Egypt, so his tomb here is a pilgrimage place. Today, the mosque dominates a large midan (square), easily visible and accessible from the Corniche. Leave your shoes at the entrance and slip the attendant a little baksheesh (tip) when you collect them. Visitors can join the devotees who still flock to Al Mursi’s shrine under the main floor. On summer nights a carnival-like atmosphere surrounds the mosque, with everything from pony rides to bumper cars to merry-go-rounds.
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Cavafy Museum
The Alexandrian-Greek poet Constantine Cavafy spent his last 25 years in an apartment above a brothel on the former Rue Lepsius, a flat now preserved as the Cavafy Museum, with two of the six rooms arranged as Cavafy kept them. Editions of the poet’s publications and photocopies of his manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence lie spread out on tables throughout the other rooms. A collection of portraits and paintings of the poet adorns the walls of the last room. With a Greek church (St Saba) around the corner and a hospital opposite, Cavafy thought this was the ideal place to live; somewhere to cater for the flesh, somewhere to provide forgiveness for sins, and a place in which to die. For those who love Cavafy's poetry this is almost a place of pilgrimage.