The largest religious building ever constructed, and most visitors see it in an hour and a half. Spend it on these five things.
Karnak was built and rebuilt across roughly two thousand years by more than thirty pharaohs, each adding to what the last had left. Nobody sees all of it. On a day trip from the coast you have about ninety minutes, so it pays to know what you are walking towards.
The hypostyle hall
One hundred and thirty-four columns in sixteen rows, the central twelve standing twenty-one metres high. The scale is the point, but look up: traces of the original paint survive on the undersides of the architraves, blues and reds that once covered every surface here.
The rest of the short list
The obelisk of Hatshepsut, still standing at nearly thirty metres, is the tallest in Egypt. The sacred lake was used for the priests' ritual purification. The scarab statue beside it is where everybody circles — seven times for a wish, according to a tradition that is entirely modern. And the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes at the entrance once ran the full three kilometres to Luxor Temple.
The scale is the point, but look up: traces of the original paint survive on the undersides of the architraves, blues and reds that once covered every surface here.
Go early or late. Midday inside the hypostyle hall is hot, crowded and hard to photograph; the light in the last hour before closing is far better and the tour groups have gone.
