Alexandria hides its 2,300 years underground and underwater: Roman villas beneath a tram stop, Christian tombs carved into Ptolemaic rock, and the Pharos itself recycled into a sultan's fortress. Three days to read the layers.
A 2nd-century AD funerary complex sunk 35m down a spiral shaft, rediscovered in 1900 when a donkey fell through. The main tomb fuses Egyptian gods with Roman togas; the Hall of Caracalla holds bones of massacred youths. Daily 09:00–17:00.
A 27m red Aswan granite column raised in 297 AD for Diocletian, misnamed by Crusaders. It stands on the ruins of the Serapeum, the temple that housed the daughter library of Alexandria until Christian mobs destroyed it in 391 AD.
Egypt's only surviving Roman theatre, found in 1960 by Polish archaeologists digging foundations for a government block. Thirteen marble tiers, a set of lecture halls from the 5th-century university, and the Villa of the Birds with its mosaic floors.
Sultan Qaitbay built this fortress in 1477 on the exact footprint of the Pharos lighthouse, reusing its fallen granite blocks — several are still visible in the northern walls. The keep's mosque is the oldest surviving in the city.
Reopened in October 2023 after two decades of restoration, the 1892 museum holds 40,000 objects: Tanagra figurines, the black granite Apis bull from the Serapeum, and mummy portraits. Sat–Thu 09:00–17:00.
The restored Al-Saad Bassili Pasha palace, built in 1929 for a cotton magnate and later the US consulate. Three floors run chronologically downward: Pharaonic in the basement, Graeco-Roman on the ground, Coptic and Islamic above.
Built 1929–1945 over the 13th-century tomb of an Andalusian Sufi from Murcia, in cream Italian stone with an octagonal plan and a 73m minaret. The surrounding Anfoushi quarter is the old Ottoman Turkish town.
Khedive Abbas II built the Salamlek hunting lodge in 1892; King Fuad added the Haramlik in 1932 in a Florentine-Ottoman hybrid. Farouk was in residence here in July 1952 when the Free Officers forced his abdication.
Founded in 1354, rebuilt in 1850 after Napoleon's bombardment, and restored by the Egyptian state in 2020 at a cost of 100 million EGP. Fourteen marble columns, a women's gallery, and the Torah scrolls of a community that once numbered 40,000.
The Coptic Orthodox cathedral marks where the evangelist Mark is said to have been martyred in 68 AD, making Alexandria the mother see of African Christianity. The present building dates to 1870, on foundations rebuilt many times over.
Ptolemaic rock-cut tombs from the 3rd century BC painted with false marble and alabaster patterns, sitting under the fishing lanes of Anfoushi. Ras el-Tin Palace nearby is where Farouk boarded the yacht Mahroussa into exile.
The 1905 café on Saad Zaghloul Square where Cavafy took his coffee, with Art Nouveau ceilings intact. Around it lie the vanished Greek, Italian and Levantine Alexandria of Durrell's Quartet — the Cecil Hotel is across the square.