Alexandria
Alexandria Travel Guide | Egypt
Egypt’s second city is a metropolis of 6 million people located
on the Mediterranean coast at the western edge of the Nile Delta. While Cairo
is nearly impossible to compete with in terms of historic architecture and monuments,
Alexandria may actually be one of the few cities in the world that has a more
storied history. Alexander the Great founded the city in 331 BC, making it
nearly 1400 years older than Cairo, and it quickly became one of the
wealthiest, largest, and most cultured cities in the world.
Today, Alexandria has relatively little to show for its iconic past. Natural
disasters, repeated conquests and sieges, and the fact that the city has been
repeatedly rebuilt overtop of itself have removed much of ancient and historic
Alexandria from view, but it remains a beautiful and enchanting city with
immediate access to the beautiful beaches of the Mediterranean.
When Alexander the Great took control of Egypt in 331 BC, he
decided to build a new capital that would link the Nile Valley to the sea and
his native Greece. The city that he built and personally laid out was given his
name and became the seat of power in Egypt until the Arab conquest in 642 AD.
The city immediately benefitted from the influence of Greek culture after
Alexander’s conquests and its strategic geographic position. Within 100 years
of its founding, Alexandria was second only to Rome in terms of population and
it had emerged as a center of economic and cultural influence.
Under the Ptolemies Alexandria became known as the single greatest repository
of knowledge in the world, home of the legendary Library of Alexandria. It was
also home to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Pharos, or the
Lighthouse of Alexandria, which is said to have towered 138 meters (450 feet)
over the city’s busy harbor.
Neither the historic Library of Alexandria nor the Pharos is
standing today. Along with the palaces of Alexandria from the Greco-Roman era
and other important buildings, both were destroyed by a series of disasters.
Earthquakes and tsunamis have changed the Alexandrian coastline, causing the
lighthouse to collapse and the royal palace to fall into the sea. The great
library was destroyed in a fire; however,
Alexandria’s significance was not only to be found in its architecture and
wealth. As the capital of Egypt under the Greeks, Alexandria was a diverse
city, home to large populations of Greeks and other ethnicities.
Alexandria was home to the largest population of Jews and the Septuagint, the
only Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that has survived to the present
day. The city also became important to Egyptian Christians as the political and
cultural center of Egypt during the rise of Christianity. The seat of the
Coptic Orthodox Papacy is still located in Alexandria to this day.
Though it has suffered destruction from war and natural
disasters several times in its history, most recently much of the city’s core
was destroyed in 1882 during a three-day bombardment that marked the British
seizure of power in Egypt. The city recovered though and became a thriving and
cosmopolitan port again from the late 19th century through the middle of the
20th century.
This period of Alexandria’s history in immortalize in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandrian
Quartet, in which he describes the city as a decadent and vibrant place with
“five races, five languages, a dozen creeds”. This chapter in Alexandria’s
history came to a close, however, with the nationalist and socialist revolution
of the Free Officers in 1952.
This new government, which banned non-Egyptians from owning property or
businesses, and the influence of Arab nationalism, led to the exodus of
Alexandria’s large Jewish and international communities and the dismantling of
the multicultural society that thrived their for centuries.
Modern Alexandria
Today, Alexandria’s population has ballooned and modern
construction has built over many of the buildings from its cosmopolitan and
ancient pasts. It has its share of noise and traffic jams, like most modern
cities in Egypt, but its storied past, both ancient and more contemporary,
still peaks through the clutter.
Much of Alexandria’s archeological wealth is buried under the very streets that
people use today and construction projects consistently reveal new finds.
Despite the destruction of many of the physical remnants of Alexandria’s
history, the city still offers a growing array of impressive sites.
In the city center along the coastline, one can still see the
remnants of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria at the Cecil Hotel and the Great
Synagogue, now in disuse after the departure of all but a handful of the nearly
100,000 Jews that called Alexandria home less than a century ago. On a
peninsula jutting out from the corniche stands Qaitbey Citadel, a 15th century
construction, built atop the foundations of the collapsed Pharos Lighthouse.
From there the beautiful, modern construction of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
can be seen. It is a huge library, research center, and cultural venue, built
on the site of the ancient Library as a memorial to Alexandria’s past.
Further island are several impressive sites from the Greco-Roman era, including
the Kom Al Shoqafa tombs, considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle
Ages. There is a little bit of every era of Alexandria’s unique history to be
found hidden within the modern city.
Places of Interest
-Greco-Roman Museum
-Pompey’s Pillar
-Roman Amphitheater
-Qaitbey Citadel
-Bibliotheca Alexandrina
-Montaza Palace and Park
-Al Alamein