Sharm el-Sheikh sits on a peninsula that Egyptians, Byzantines, Bedouin, Ottomans and Israelis have all held. Behind the dive boats lie Saint Catherine's 6th-century monastery, Nabataean turquoise mines and the 1967–1982 military history of the Straits of Tiran.
Built 548–565 AD by Justinian I around the Burning Bush chapel, this UNESCO site is the world's oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery. The Church of the Transfiguration keeps 6th-century mosaics; entry is free, open Mon–Thu and Sat 09:00–12:00.
The monastery's museum displays roughly 120 of its 2,000 icons, including encaustic panels from the 6th and 7th centuries that survived Byzantine iconoclasm, plus pages from the Codex Sinaiticus and the Ashtiname charter attributed to Prophet Muhammad.
The 3,750 granite steps cut by a single penitent monk climb 2,285 m to the summit chapel built in 1934 over 4th-century ruins. Even the first 45 minutes to Elijah's Basin passes Byzantine gateways and the cypress of the Stairs of Repentance.
The largest oasis in Sinai, Feiran was the seat of a bishopric from the 4th century and held a cathedral, monastery and hermit cells before the Muslim conquest. Ruined stone foundations and the modern convent sit among 12,000 date palms in the wadi bed.
Opened in 2018 near El Salam Road, the museum covers the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 October War with captured Israeli Centurion tanks, MiG fighters and the Egyptian flag raised at the 1982 Sinai handover.
The original settlement of Sharm el-Sheikh — a naval anchorage the Egyptian army fortified in 1956 to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, triggering the Suez Crisis. The stone quay and 1960s port buildings still frame the bay.
Completed in 2017 after eight years' work, this 3,000-worshipper mosque fuses Ottoman domes, Fatimid stone banding and Mamluk minarets — a deliberate architectural summary of Egypt's Islamic dynasties, with hand-carved Damascene woodwork inside.
The obelisk-and-arch monument on the ridge above Nabq marks the 1979 Egypt–Israel treaty and the phased Sinai withdrawal completed on 25 April 1982, a date still observed nationally as Sinai Liberation Day.
A settlement of the Muzeina Bedouin, on the coast inside Nabq, where families have fished the mangrove shallows for generations. The village explains a pre-tourism Sinai economy of fish, camels and seasonal migration between coast and mountain.
Opened November 2020 on Peace Road, it holds 5,200 artefacts spanning Predynastic to Islamic Egypt, including a Ramesside statue, the mummified remains of an Old Kingdom noble's household and 26th-Dynasty bronze cats from Bubastis.
Egyptians mined turquoise here from the 3rd Dynasty; the plateau temple to Hathor, Lady of Turquoise, was expanded through the 12th and 18th Dynasties. Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions carved by Semitic workers here are the oldest known alphabetic writing.
The Crusaders fortified this islet off Taba around 1116 to tax pilgrim caravans; Salah al-Din took it in 1170 and rebuilt the towers, cisterns and curtain wall that still ring the rock, restored by Egypt's antiquities service in the 1980s.