Fort Qaitbey
First, a few facts: With a population of 4.4 million, Alexandria is Egypt's second-largest city, as well as the sixth-largest city in the Arab-speaking world and the ninth-largest in Africa. It stretches for 20 kilometers (12 miles) along the Mediterranean shoreline.
Second, some history: The city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, but was initially developed by the Macedonian general Ptolemy, who took over following Alexander's death in 323 BCE. Under Ptolemy, Alexandria became a major port and an important stop on trade routes between Asia and Europe, and was renowned for its library and the Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. By Cleopatra's time (51-30 BCE), Alexandria had become a serious rival to Rome, an intolerable situation that led to its falling under Roman rule and the beginning of a long decline. When Muslim armies invaded Egypt in the 7th century, Alexandria was shunted aside in favor of a new capital on the Nile.
The city's fortunes started to reverse when the French invaded in 1798. During the reign of Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, a new town was built on top of the old one, and Alexandria became a busy cosmopolitan port. Following the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 and the Suez Crisis of 1956, Alexandria lost most of its foreign population. In 2010, the death of Khaled Said in an Alexandria police station sparked the events that eventually led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in the 2011 revolution.
And third, taking these facts and history into account, my family and I plunged into Alexandria's chaotic traffic on the last Monday of December 2019 to see a few of the sights. The view from our hotel room balcony on the seventh floor...:
...and from the 11th-floor restaurant where we had breakfast:
Maneuvering through central Alexandria's narrow streets courtesy of Uber, our first stop was the Alexandria National Museum, housed in a restored Italianate villa:
The museum houses a small but well-curated collection of exhibits that does an excellent job of laying out the city's history from antiquity up to more modern times. The first floor covers the Greco-Roman period:
The Greek god Harpocrates. The finger to his lips represented silence:
A statue of a Ptolemaic queen, with an Egyptian appearance and a Hellenistic body:
As the city has sunk between 6 and 8 meters (20-26 feet) over time, many important finds have been discovered underwater, making Alexandria something of a diving destination. The sphinx and female figures pictured here are for effect only, however:
The basement covers the Pharaonic period, with items from all over the country:
According to my Lonely Planet guide, reserve heads were used as substitutes for the real ones in the afterlife:
The second (i.e. top) floor displays artifacts from the Byzantine, Islamic and modern periods. The view out one of the upstairs windows:
Though much smaller in scale than the famed Egyptian National Museum in Cairo (which we would visit later on in our trip), the Alexandria National Museum exceeds it in scope, and should be a traveler's first stop in the city to get an overview of its past before visiting the various historical locales.
From the museum, we started walking in the direction of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Alexandria has a tram system, but for us it wasn't convenient, so we continued to hoof it towards the waterfront, a twenty-minute walk away:
It's well-known that cats had an exalted status in ancient Egypt. Based on the number of felines we saw in Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor, it would seem things haven't changed that much over the centuries:
The eateries across the road from Alexandria University were beginning to fill up with hungry students as we passed by:
The Great Library of Alexandria was considered the repository of ancient knowledge and a classical architectural institution. Its modern version, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002, is a major modern cultural venue. The design is meant to evoke "a gigantic angled discus embedded in the ground, evoking a second sun rising out of the Mediterranean", according to my LP guide:
Once inside, my daughter quickly gravitated to the interactive exhibits...:
...while yours truly was drawn to the multimedia displays on Nasser, Sadat and the 2011 revolution:
Mom, of course, chose to side with Amber:
The main reading room was suitably impressive. It can hold up to 8 million books and 2500 readers. The windows under the sloping roof are designed to let sunlight in but keep rays (which could be harmful to reading material) out:
There are several museums housed within the main library building. Having just visited the Alexandria National Museum, we skipped the Antiquities Museum, but Amber and I did check out the Manuscript Museum:
Although we had lunch at a cafe just outside the library entrance, Shu-E was still feeling hungry, so we strolled back over to Ali Moustafa Moshrfah St. for some Egyptian street food. The cheerful cook was more than happy to be photographed:
On the waterfront along Al Corniche. In the summer it must be very pleasant. At the end of December things had turned decidedly chilly:
From the library we hailed a taxi and were taken along the Eastern Harbor to Fort Qaitbey. The citadel was built in 1480 on a narrow peninsula over the remains of the legendary Pharos lighthouse, which had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1303; materials from the lighthouse were used in the fort's construction. Signage within the citadel is limited, but it didn't require much imagination to figure out the purposes of the various rooms:
This Byzantine bath is attributed to the remains of the old lighthouse:
It was getting late in the afternoon as we left the fortress and walked back toward the waterfront:
A look across the water to the Citadel of Qaitbay:
An Uber took us back to our hotel, where we spent our last night in Alexandria:
The next day we would see a little more of the city before returning to Cairo...
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