Alexandria Day Tour

Alexandria — the city Alexander founded, the Ptolemies ruled, and Cleopatra loved — remains the great Mediterranean counterweight to Cairo. This private day tour drives you north from Cairo through the Delta, gives you six or seven hours in the city itself, and returns you in the evening. It is the most efficient way to combine two of the country’s essential experiences in a single visit.

Morning: You are collected at 07:00 from your Cairo or Giza hotel and driven north on the desert road. Your Egyptologist uses the drive to sketch the history: the founding of the city in 331 BCE, the great library, the lighthouse of Pharos, the Roman city, the Byzantine and Islamic centuries, and the Belle Époque cosmopolitan city that survived until the 1950s. On arrival — around 09:30 — you begin at the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, the largest surviving Graeco-Roman funerary complex in Egypt, hollowed out over three tiers into the bedrock. Your guide interprets the extraordinary fusion of Egyptian, Greek and Roman iconography — Anubis in Roman armour, sarcophagi carved in Alexandrian marble — that defines Ptolemaic Alexandria.

A short drive brings you to Pompey’s Pillar, the great red-granite Roman column that once stood at the centre of the Serapeum, and to the site of the ancient sanctuary. The Roman Amphitheatre at Kom el-Dikka — the only one preserved in Egypt — is nearby, together with the villa mosaics that were excavated on the same site.

Afternoon: Lunch is served at a classic Alexandrian seafood restaurant on the Corniche — the seafront boulevard that curves for twenty kilometres from Montaza Palace to the port. Fish is selected from ice and grilled to order; sayadeya, rice cooked in fish stock, is the local speciality. From the restaurant you drive to Qaitbay Citadel, the fifteenth-century Mamluk fortress built on the exact ground of the ancient Pharos lighthouse, using — according to divers — stones fallen from the lighthouse itself.

The final stop is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern library that opened in 2002 in explicit dialogue with the ancient one. The main reading room is an architectural masterwork; the antiquities museum and the manuscript museum inside offer a fine coda to the day.

Evening: You return to Cairo in the late afternoon, arriving at your hotel by 20:00. On summer evenings the drive back is cool and the desert light is beautiful.

Photography is permitted throughout. Practical advice: pack lightly, but bring layers — the sea breeze in Alexandria is cooler than Cairo, even in summer. Modest dress is not required in Alexandria but is respectful in the older neighbourhoods. Family suitability is very good from age eight; the catacombs are a favourite with children. Accessibility is partial — the catacombs involve stairs; the citadel and library are fully accessible. Best months are April through October, when Alexandria’s Mediterranean weather is at its most agreeable.