Historical cities and holy places

Alexandria: the Mediterranean city that is barely Egypt

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Anorya Team · 12 avr. 2025 · 1 min read

Founded by Alexander, ruled by Greeks, and it still feels closer to Naples than to Cairo.

Alexander founded it in 331 BC and it spent the next thousand years as the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean world. Almost none of that survives above ground — earthquakes, subsidence and the sea took the ancient city, and the Pharos lighthouse with it.

Alexandria: the Mediterranean city that is barely Egypt

What stands on the lighthouse site is the Qaitbay citadel, built in the 1480s partly from the lighthouse's own fallen stone, on the same spot, jutting into the harbour. It is the one unmissable thing.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the modern answer to the ancient library: a vast disc of granite tilted towards the sea, opened in 2002, with a reading room on eleven cascading levels. Whether or not you go inside, the building is worth standing in front of.

Alexandria: the Mediterranean city that is barely EgyptAlexandria: the Mediterranean city that is barely Egypt

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the modern answer to the ancient library: a vast disc of granite tilted towards the sea, opened in 2002, with a reading room on eleven cascading levels.

Also: the Kom el-Shoqafa catacombs, a Roman burial complex where Egyptian, Greek and Roman funerary art collide in the same carvings, and the corniche itself, which is where the city actually lives. Eat fish — Alexandria is where Egyptians go to eat fish.

Alexandria: the Mediterranean city that is barely Egypt
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