Alexandria Travel Guide: Egypt's Mediterranean City (2026)

Alexandria is the Egypt that faces the other way. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC and once the intellectual capital of the ancient world — home to the Great Library and the Pharos Lighthouse — today's "Alex" trades desert for sea spray, pharaonic for Greco-Roman and Belle Époque, and the timeless for the wistful. It's an easy day trip from Cairo and a genuine change of register. (See it on the interactive map.)

Bibliotheca Alexandrina

The city's must-see is a deliberate act of revival. Opened in 2002 beside the eastern harbour, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a vast tilted disc — its granite skin carved with the scripts of the world — meant to evoke a second sun rising from the Mediterranean and to reclaim the spirit of the lost ancient library. Inside, the soaring cascade reading room seats thousands; there are antiquities, manuscript and science museums too. Whether or not you read a page, the architecture alone justifies the trip.

Qaitbay Citadel and the ghost of the Lighthouse

On the tip of the eastern harbour stands the Citadel of Qaitbay, a squat 15th-century fort built in 1477 on the exact spot — and partly from the tumbled limestone — of the Pharos of Alexandria, the ancient Lighthouse and one of the Seven Wonders of the World, toppled by medieval earthquakes. The seafront walk out to it, with fishing boats and spray, is the most Mediterranean thing you'll do in Egypt.

Roman Alexandria underground

The city's Greco-Roman layer is best felt below ground at the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa — a haunting, multi-level 2nd-century AD necropolis where Egyptian gods and Roman togas share the same carved walls, reached by a spiral stair around a shaft once used to lower the dead. Nearby, the Roman Amphitheatre at Kom el-Dikka and Pompey's Pillar complete the classical picture.

The Corniche and Belle Époque charm

Alexandria's real pleasure is its atmosphere of romantic decline. Walk the long seafront Corniche; take coffee in a faded grand café like the century-old Délices or Trianon; eat fresh-off-the-boat seafood in the Anfoushi fish market district; and feel the lingering ghost of the cosmopolitan, Greek-and-Italian-flecked city that the poet Cavafy and the novelist Lawrence Durrell immortalised. (Cavafy's apartment is now a small museum.)

Practicalities

• How long: a long day trip from Cairo does the highlights; an overnight lets you slow down for the seafood and cafés.
• Getting there: roughly 2.5–3 hours from Cairo by train (frequent) or car.
• When: pleasant most of the year; summer is the busy Egyptian-holiday season, winter can be wet and windy but atmospheric.
• Best for: travellers who want a break from temples and desert, and lovers of history's quieter, in-between layers.

Pair Alexandria with a Cairo stay — see the Cairo travel guide — and slot it into a longer trip via the Egypt Travel Guide 2026.