Alexandria, Egypt is the Mediterranean side of the country, and this is what to see and how to fit it in

Why Alexandria feels like a different country from the Nile

After the pyramids and the temples of Luxor, Alexandria is a shock in the best sense. The desert is gone. In its place you get a bay, a sea breeze that never stops, a corniche that runs for miles, and streets of old apartment blocks with iron balconies that could be in Marseille.

Alexander laid the city out in 331 BC. For three centuries it was the capital of the Greek-speaking Ptolemies, home to the great Library and to the lighthouse counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world. Cleopatra ruled from here, and Rome kept it as the second city of the empire.

Very little of the ancient city stands above ground; earthquakes and two thousand years of rebuilding put the royal quarter under the harbor and the rest under the streets. What survives is scattered, which is why a guide changes the day here more than almost anywhere else in Egypt.

The Qaitbay citadel, standing where the Pharos lighthouse stood

Start at the tip of the eastern harbor. The Qaitbay citadel is a compact limestone fortress built in the late fifteenth century by the Mamluk sultan of that name, and it sits on the precise footprint of the Pharos, the lighthouse that guided ships into Alexandria for over a thousand years until medieval earthquakes brought it down. The builders quarried the ruins; the red granite columns in the walls came from the lighthouse.

Inside there is not a great deal: a mosque in the keep, cisterns, corridors with slit windows. The point is the setting. From the ramparts you look back along the whole curve of the corniche and out to sea where the beam once swept. Give it forty five minutes, then walk the breakwater.

The quarter behind the citadel, Anfushi and Bahari, is the old fishing district and home to the best seafood in the city, which decides where lunch happens on our day trips.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern library on the old idea

The ancient Library is gone and nobody knows exactly where it stood. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002 a short walk east along the corniche, is the modern answer: a tilted granite disc rising from a reflecting pool, its outer wall carved with letters from most of the world's writing systems. Inside is a vast terraced reading room under a roof that lets in filtered daylight.

The Antiquities Museum inside, with statues raised from the harbor floor, is worth your time. Check the current tour schedule for the reading room when you plan.

Read our guide to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, from the ancient library to the modern one before you go, then budget ninety minutes on site. On a day trip it comes after lunch, when the reading room is a cool place to sit.

The catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, the strangest tomb in Egypt

If you see one ancient site in Alexandria, make it this one. Kom el Shoqafa means mound of shards, after the pottery that covered the hill for centuries. The catacombs beneath were found in 1900, supposedly when a donkey fell through the roof, and they are the largest Roman-era burial complex in Egypt, cut three levels into the rock in the second century AD.

You descend a spiral staircase around the shaft down which bodies were lowered, past a banquet hall where mourners ate in honor of the dead, into the main tomb chamber, and this is where it gets odd. The reliefs show Egyptian gods performing Egyptian rites, carved in Roman style. Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming, wears the armor of a Roman legionary. It is the one place where the three cultures of the city merge on a single wall.

Allow an hour, and wear shoes with grip; it is humid and the steps are worn.

Pompey's Pillar and the Serapeum hill next door

Five minutes from the catacombs, a single column of red Aswan granite stands on a low hill above the rooftops, roughly 88 feet (27 meters) from base to capital. Crusader-era travelers named it for Pompey. It has nothing to do with him. The inscription dedicates it to the emperor Diocletian at the end of the third century AD.

The hill matters more than the pillar. This was the Serapeum, temple of Serapis, the god the Ptolemies invented to unite Greek and Egyptian worshipers, and the site of the daughter library that held the overflow of the great Library's scrolls. Walk down into the rock-cut galleries and you can see the niches where scrolls were stored. Thirty to forty minutes is enough, and because it sits beside the catacombs the two are always done together.

Kom el Dikka, the Roman theater, and the Alexandria National Museum

In the middle of downtown, a Polish excavation in the 1960s uncovered a small Roman odeon, thirteen tiers of white marble in a tight semicircle, the only Roman theater found in Egypt. Around it are Roman baths, a row of ancient lecture halls, and the Villa of the Birds with its floor mosaics. Forty five minutes.

The Alexandria National Museum, a short drive away, is the museum we send people to when there is time for one. It occupies a restored Italian-style mansion, Pharaonic in the basement, Greco-Roman on the ground floor, Coptic and Islamic upstairs. It is compact and labeled in English, and an hour does it.

The corniche, Montaza gardens and the old cafes

The monuments are half of Alexandria. The other half is the seafront and the habit of sitting in it. The corniche runs for roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the citadel to Montaza, and driving its length at the end of the day, with the sun going down behind the harbor and the fishing boats coming in, is the moment most guests remember.

Montaza, at the eastern end, is a walled park of palms and gardens around two royal palaces; the palace is closed, the gardens and seaside walk are open, and on a weekday out of season it is the calmest place in the city.

Downtown, look for the cafes and patisseries the Greek and Italian communities left behind. Several still have their original mirrors, marble tables and waiters in white jackets. Sit with a coffee, watch the trams pass, and you have understood something no monument teaches.

Ask about a day trip with a seafood lunch on the harbor

Eating in Alexandria, and how a fish restaurant works

Alexandria eats like a Mediterranean port, and it is the best reason to come that has nothing to do with archaeology. The fish restaurants of Bahari and Anfushi work like any harbor town in Greece, and you should know the routine.

1. You walk to the ice counter at the entrance, not to a table.
2. You choose from what came in that morning: sea bream, mullet, shrimp, calamari, crab.
3. The fish is weighed in front of you and you agree how it is cooked: grilled over charcoal, baked in salt, or fried for the small ones.
4. You sit, and the table fills with mezze you did not order: tahini, pickles, rice cooked in fish stock, warm bread. It is included.

Ask the kilo rate before the fish goes on the scale; every local does. Order sayadeya if you see it, the spiced fish and rice dish that is the city's signature.

Getting there from Cairo: the train versus a private car

Alexandria is about 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Cairo. Two ways to make the trip suit two kinds of traveler.

The train is pleasant, but the sites are spread out and the city's traffic is heavy, so a train day trip spends its middle hours in taxis. With a car and a guide who knows the order, you see the whole list between nine and five and sleep in your own Cairo bed. That is what most of our Cairo excursions guests choose. Ask us for the quote either way.

Day trip or overnight? An honest answer

A day trip works. Leave Cairo around seven, and by mid morning you are underground at Kom el Shoqafa. Pompey's Pillar follows, then the citadel, seafood in Bahari, the library in the afternoon, and the corniche before the road back. You skip Montaza, the theater and the museums, but you get the essence.

An overnight turns a checklist into a place. The city is at its best after five, when the office crowd fills the cafes and the corniche becomes one long promenade. The second morning covers Kom el Dikka, the National Museum and Montaza. It also opens two side trips.

• Rosetta (Rashid), about an hour east, the town where the Rosetta Stone was found, with Ottoman merchant houses on the western mouth of the Nile. Pair it with our guide to the Rosetta Stone and how it cracked hieroglyphs.
• El Alamein, about two hours west, the Second World War battlefield, cemeteries and museum.

Our rule of thumb: on a first trip of a week or less, do the day trip or give the day to Luxor instead. On ten days or more, or a second visit, spend the night. What to see in Cairo always comes first.

The best months to visit Alexandria, with temperatures

Alexandria has a different climate from the rest of Egypt, and it is the one destination where rain is a real possibility.

For a day trip, October, November, March and April are the sweet spot. In winter we keep the Alexandria day movable within your Cairo stay, because a nawa storm turns the corniche into a wall of spray. Our page on the best time to visit Egypt puts the coast in the context of the whole country.

What to skip, and what to expect from the city as it is

Alexandria is not Luxor. The marble Greek city in your head is under the water and under the streets. What you get is a big, noisy Mediterranean port with a fragmented heritage, a beautiful seafront and an atmosphere that grows on you by the hour. Set expectations there and it is one of the most satisfying days in Egypt.

• Skip the city beaches. Crowded, murky, and nothing like the Red Sea.
• Skip Montaza on a day trip. It is far east and eats an hour in traffic.
• Skip the "Cleopatra's Bath" stops some drivers offer. The real story of the queen is in the harbor and in our guide to Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, not at a roadside rock pool.
• Dress a little more conservatively than at a resort. This is a big Egyptian city, and our guide to what to wear in Egypt applies in full.

One more thing to know: since the 1990s, underwater archaeologists have mapped the harbor floor and lifted sphinxes, colossal statues and granite blocks that may be pieces of the lighthouse, and at Abu Qir they found two entire port cities known until then only from Greek texts. The finds you can see are in the Bibliotheca and the National Museum, in glass cases.

How Explora Egipto runs an Alexandria day

We are a local agency in Egypt with our own guides and vehicles, and here the value is in the sequencing and the lunch. This is the standard day when you add it to a Cairo stay.

1. Pickup at your Cairo hotel around seven, in a private air conditioned vehicle with your Egyptologist guide.
2. Kom el Shoqafa and Pompey's Pillar first, while it is cool and the catacombs are empty.
3. The Qaitbay citadel and a walk on the breakwater.
4. Seafood lunch in Bahari, at a place we know, with the guide handling the counter so you just choose the fish.
5. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the afternoon.
6. Corniche drive past the old cafes, then back to Cairo by early evening.

The overnight version adds a hotel on the corniche, dinner downtown, and a second morning of Kom el Dikka, the National Museum and Montaza, with Rosetta or El Alamein as options. Both slot into any of our Egypt tour packages as an extra day in the Cairo section. Tell us how many days you have in Cairo, and we send you the quote.

Send me the day trip and overnight options

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