Alexandria

Alexandria is the Greek and Roman capital of Egypt, and in our judgement it is the one great Egyptian city where the ancient layer lies mostly underneath you rather than in front of you. Alexander the Great founded it in 332 BC on the site of a small Egyptian village called Rhakotis, and the Greek historian Diodorus called it "the first city of the civilised world".

Its two most famous buildings are gone. The Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders, stood where Qaitbay Fort now stands, and in 1996 French and Egyptian divers found columns, statues and sphinxes in the eastern harbour beside it. The ancient Library survives only as a story, which the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina answers to. What you can still walk through is the city of ordinary life and death: the Roman and Byzantine quarter of Kom el-Dikka, with its theatre and lecture halls; the Roman-period tombs of the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, where Egyptian gods appear in Roman dress; and Pompey's Pillar, standing where the great temple of Serapis once stood.