Alexandria keeps its layers visible: Roman mosaics under a tram line, an Italianate opera house on Fouad Street, Art Deco villas in Roushdy, and studios in Attarine where a new generation paints the Mediterranean. Three days for the city's living cultural spine.
Reopened October 2023 after a 18-year restoration, with 22 halls tracing Alexandria from Alexander to the Copts — Tanagra figurines, the black granite Apis bull from the Serapeum and mummy portraits. Open 09:00–17:00 daily.
A three-level Roman necropolis cut 35m into bedrock, discovered in 1900 when a donkey fell through the shaft. The main tomb fuses Egyptian jackal gods in Roman armour with Greek mouldings — the clearest surviving statement of Alexandrian hybrid art.
Thirteen tiers of white Carrara marble, the only Roman theatre in Egypt, uncovered accidentally in 1960 during foundation work for a housing block. The adjacent Villa of the Birds preserves 2nd-century floor mosaics of peacocks, quail and a purple gallinule.
The 1920s villa of Alexandria's greatest modern painter, a judge who painted monumental Mediterranean nudes and dervishes. Three floors hold his work plus the Wanly brothers' expressionist canvases and a modern Egyptian art collection. Closed Mondays.
The palace of Princess Fatma Al-Zahra, built 1919 with stained-glass panels depicting European romances and gilded bathrooms. Inside: Muhammad Ali dynasty regalia — a diamond-studded chess set, Khedive Ismail's platinum crown, Farouk's gold-handled shaving kit.
The fourth-floor flat where Constantine Cavafy wrote 'Ithaca' and 'The City', restored in 2023 by the Onassis Foundation with his bed, icons, first editions and manuscripts. He chose the address deliberately: brothel below, hospital nearby, church opposite.
Built 1921 in Italian rococo as the Mohamed Ali Theatre, with a horseshoe auditorium seating 800 under a painted dome. Renamed for the composer who invented modern Egyptian song. Home to the Alexandria Opera and the Bibliotheca chamber orchestra.
An Art Nouveau tavern from 1893 with the original zinc bar, marble tables and Belle Époque mirrors, unchanged since the Greek merchant era. Locals drink Stella beer here after the theatre; the walls are hung with a century of Alexandrian ephemera.
The 1943 Italian-designed mosque over the tomb of a 13th-century Andalusian Sufi, with an octagonal plan in cream Beheira stone and four domes. Its mawlid draws thousands each Ramadan; the surrounding Anfushi lanes are Ottoman Alexandria's last fabric.
A 1930s film-distribution house turned independent art space, run since 2013 by the Behna family archive project. Hosts contemporary exhibitions, artist residencies and screenings drawn from thousands of Egyptian cinema negatives found in the building.
Streets of workshops where the furniture of departing Greek, Italian and Jewish families ended up after 1956 — Levantine mirrors, Deco lamps, brass. Craftsmen still restore and copy pieces in the same alleys; open roughly 10:00–20:00, closed Friday midday.
The 1905 patisserie with frescoed ceilings and Deco murals where Cavafy took his coffee and Durrell's characters meet in the Quartet. Still a working Alexandrian institution — old men with newspapers, mirrored walls, waiters in white jackets.