Cities in Egypt — 3-Day Travel Guides

Alexandria

Alexandria (الإسكندرية — Al-Iskandariyya, population 5.2 million) is Egypt's second city and Mediterranean port, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC as the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt. In the ancient world it was the most important city in the Mediterranean — the site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, 135m tall), the Library of Alexandria (the greatest library ever assembled, holding the intellectual inheritance of the Hellenistic world — lost to fire and neglect between 48 BC and 640 AD), and the Mouseion (the first research institution in history, precursor to the modern university). Alexandria retains a distinctly Mediterranean character different from Cairo: the Corniche (the 20km seafront promenade along the Mediterranean), the French and Italian-inspired architecture of the belle époque, the fish and seafood culture of the Mediterranean, and the literary legacy of the Greek-Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy and Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.

Africa

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Cairo

Cairo (Al-Qahira — "The Victorious") is Africa's largest city and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, at the point where the Nile Delta begins and the Eastern and Western Deserts meet. The city is an overwhelming, exhilarating layering of civilizations: 4,500-year-old pyramids 20 minutes by taxi from the urban sprawl, 10th-century Fatimid mosques beside Coptic churches that predate Islam by 600 years, Ottoman palaces, Belle Époque boulevards and a chaotic megalopolis of 22 million people navigating one of the world's most ferocious traffic systems. The Egyptian Museum holds the world's most extraordinary collection of ancient artifacts including Tutankhamun's golden mask. Islamic Cairo — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — contains the greatest concentration of medieval Islamic architecture in the world.

Africa

🇪🇬 Egypt