Best time
Spring & autumn
Home / Destinations / Alexandria
Destination guide · The Mediterranean coastEgypt turned toward the sea — Alexander's capital and Cleopatra's, where the greatest wonders are long lost to the water, and the Mediterranean itself is the reason to come.
Alexandria is Egypt turned the other way — away from the desert and the Nile, out toward the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great founded it in 331 BC; under the Ptolemies and Cleopatra it became the most brilliant city of the ancient world, with the greatest library ever assembled and a lighthouse counted among the Seven Wonders. Almost none of it survives. Earthquakes, fire and the slow rise of the sea took the rest, and much of the classical city now lies beneath the modern one, or under the harbour itself.
So this is not a place you come to tick off monuments — there are only a handful, and they are modest beside Luxor's. You come for something harder to photograph: the salt air and the long Corniche, the faded cosmopolitan grandeur of a port that was once Greek and Italian and Levantine all at once, the finest seafood in Egypt, and the strange romance of standing in a great city that is mostly a memory. Set your expectations rightly, and Alexandria is unlike anywhere else in the country.
Alexandria is a city of fragments and ghosts. A little survives above ground, a little lies beneath the sea, and the rest you visit in the imagination — which is its own pleasure here.
The real remains of ancient Alexandria are modest but strange and worth the time — Roman and Egyptian worlds tangled together underground.
The things Alexandria is most famous for no longer stand — but you can visit where they were, and in one case dive to what remains.
A vast tilted disc of granite and glass on the seafront, raised in 2002 as a tribute to the library the world lost — a working library, museum and one of the finest modern buildings in Egypt.
Alexandria's real pleasure is simply being here — the long curve of the Corniche, the sea air, and the faded cosmopolitan world of Cavafy and Durrell still half-present in the old cafés.
Alexandria keeps a Mediterranean calendar, not an Egyptian one. Spring and autumn are loveliest — mild, bright and uncrowded. Summer is the local beach season, warm and sea-cooled but heaving with Egyptian holidaymakers. Winter is the wildcard: genuinely wet and windy, with real storms off the sea — atmospheric if you like that, less so if you don't.
Whenever you come, the city is at its best in the late afternoon, walking the Corniche as the light goes amber over the water.
A full day covers the essentials — the catacombs, Pompey's Pillar, the new Library, the Citadel and a seafood lunch — and most travellers see Alexandria as a long day from Cairo.
But the city rewards an overnight more than its sights suggest. Stay, and you catch the part that doesn't fit a day-trip: an evening on the seafront, a slow morning, the melancholy charm that is the whole reason to come.
Stay on the water — it is the point of the city. The choice is between polish and romance.
The luxury address in Alexandria — a modern hotel rising over the Mediterranean on the eastern Corniche, with sea-view rooms, good dining and the comforts the older houses lack. The reliable choice for a refined night by the water.
For those who travel for atmosphere over polish: a storied 1920s hotel on the old harbour, woven through Alexandria's cosmopolitan literary past, with the patina and the quirks of its age. Faded, characterful, and full of ghosts — in the best way.
Around two and a half to three hours from Cairo by road, or a similar time by train from Ramses station — the train is a pleasant, easy way to arrive. We arrange either, with a car waiting at the other end.
The city runs long and thin along the Corniche; a private car and driver makes light of the distances. The old trams still trundle the seafront — charming, slow, and a sight in themselves.
Cooler and wetter than the rest of Egypt — Alexandria actually has a winter, with rain and sea wind. Bring a layer outside high summer, and don't be surprised by grey skies off the Mediterranean.
The public beaches are packed and the city water is not its cleanest in summer; this is a city to enjoy the sea beside rather than swim in. For swimming, the hotels and the resorts further along the coast are better.
Cleopatra's sunken quarter lies in the eastern harbour and can be dived with licensed operators, conditions and visibility permitting — a niche pleasure for the experienced, not a casual outing.
Egyptian pounds, cash for the cafés, the trams and the small tips. The usual baksheesh habits apply, though Alexandria is a touch less geared to tourism than the Nile towns.
Cosmopolitan but conservative — light and relaxed for the coast, modest in the old quarters and away from the seafront. Comfortable shoes for the catacomb steps and the Corniche.
Egypt's easy-going second city, safe and walkable with ordinary care. Traffic along the Corniche is the main hazard; otherwise it is a relaxed place to wander.
Alexandria is reached from Cairo and pairs with it — a day excursion or an overnight. We fold it into a wider journey rather than running it alone.
This is the reason many Egyptians come to Alexandria at all. It is the country's seafood capital, and the ritual is half the pleasure: at the better fish houses you choose your catch from the ice — sea bass, bream, red mullet, prawns, calamari — and it comes back grilled simply, with bread, salads, tahini and rice. Eaten by the water, it is one of the great meals in Egypt.
Alongside the fish, the cosmopolitan inheritance lingers in the old patisseries and cafés — Greek and Levantine pastries, strong coffee, and the faded glamour of another age.
We point you to the seafood houses that locals trust — the ones where the fish is freshest and the room is busy — and to the historic cafés worth a coffee for their atmosphere alone.
The usual care holds: choose busy places, bottled water, a little caution with raw shellfish. But the grilled fish, straight from the ice, is the safest and finest thing on any table in the city.
We will be plain with you, because Alexandria disappoints the travellers who arrive expecting another Luxor. The Library is gone. The Pharos is gone. Cleopatra's city is under the sea. What stands above ground is a handful of modest Greco-Roman sites and one magnificent modern building, scattered through a busy, faded, salt-worn port of five million people.
And yet, approached for what it is, Alexandria is one of the most affecting places in Egypt. It is the country's Mediterranean soul — cosmopolitan, melancholy, literary, and entirely unlike the Nile. Walk the Corniche at dusk, eat the sea's best at a table by the water, and stand where the greatest library of the ancient world once was, and you will feel something no temple offers. Just come for that, and not for a checklist.
The gateway to Alexandria, three hours south — and a city of four thousand years where most journeys begin.
JourneySixteen days to the edges of Egypt — Cairo, Alexandria, the silence of Siwa, and the Nile by cruiser.
TailoredA day or a night from Cairo, folded into a wider trip — the easiest way to give Alexandria its due.
Tell us your dates and what draws you, and we will fold the Mediterranean city into a journey shaped around you — guided, private, and unhurried.
Plan your journeyWe reply within 24 hours