Kôm el-Dikka

A neighbourhood of Roman and Byzantine Alexandria uncovered in the middle of the modern city: houses, baths, a small theatre and rows of lecture halls. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities describes it as a residential and civic quarter of the second to sixth centuries AD, and calls its theatre, or odeon, the only example of its kind in Egypt.

It is the best place in Alexandria to see how people lived, not how they were buried. The question it answers is what the city that followed Alexander's actually looked like at street level.

Giovanni Ruffini, surveying the archaeology of late Roman Egypt, points to Kom el-Dikka as a site that has revealed the contours of a late Roman residential neighbourhood, with lecture halls, a theatre and a bath. The Ministry adds that the lecture halls are believed to have belonged to a philosophical school or university.

That fits the city's reputation. Alexandria had been founded by Alexander the Great 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". Toby Wilkinson notes that the Egyptian name Rhakotis has been read as a euphemism for "building site".

Start with the theatre and its tiered marble seats. Then look for the Villa of the Birds, with its floor mosaics of birds and geometric patterns, the baths with their underfloor heating, and the lecture halls. The site also displays sculpture recovered from the sunken parts of the ancient city. Our suggestion is to sit on the theatre steps for a few minutes and imagine the lecture halls full.