Landmarks

Who each place is, before you stand in it.

Every landmark our tours visit, grouped by the chapter of the story it belongs to. Read the story for how they connect.

c. 2600 BC

They built to be seen

Dahshur
Where the Egyptians learned how to build a pyramid, by getting it wrong first.
Giza Plateau
Three generations of kings built here; the plateau asks who did the building, and how they lived.
Pyramid Complex of Khafre
The pyramid that looks tallest at Giza and isn't.
Pyramid Complex of Menkaure
The smallest of the three Giza pyramids, and the most revealing, because it was never finished.
Pyramid Complex of Teti
From outside, a heap of rubble; inside, one of the oldest libraries of religious writing.
Saqqara
If Giza is a single statement, Saqqara is a conversation that lasts nearly four thousand years.
Step Pyramid Complex of Djoser
The first building in Egypt of truly monumental scale built throughout of stone.
The Bent Pyramid
A pyramid that changes its mind halfway up.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu
The largest pyramid in Egypt, and the last of the Seven Wonders still standing.
The Great Sphinx
A king's head on a lion's body, cut from the living rock at the foot of Khafre's causeway.
The Red Pyramid
The first pyramid that worked.

c. 1500 BC

Karnak
Not a temple. A temple city.
Luxor Temple
The temple the god came to visit.
Temple of Hatshepsut
Hatshepsut's terraced temple against the cliffs, facing Karnak across the river.
Valley of the Kings
The royal cemetery of the New Kingdom, cut into a dry valley beneath a pyramid-shaped peak.

c. 1264 BC

Abu Simbel
Two temples cut into a cliff above the Nile, taken apart and rebuilt higher to save them.

c. 200 BC

Edfu Temple
The temple of Horus, whose walls are a library turned outwards.
Kom Ombo Temple
A temple built twice over, side by side, for the crocodile and the falcon.
Philae
The island that was moved.

Museums, Roman Alexandria, medieval Cairo and modern Aswan.

Ben Ezra Synagogue
The synagogue whose storeroom kept a medieval community's paperwork for centuries.
Cairo Citadel
A medieval fortress above the whole of Cairo, and the seat of Egypt's rulers for more than six centuries.
Grand Egyptian Museum
A museum whose greatest collections belong to places you can see on the same day.
Imhotep Museum
The museum at the gate of Saqqara, named after the first person in history to whom a great building can be credited.
Muhammad Ali Mosque
The mosque that gives Cairo its skyline.
The Egyptian Museum
The old museum on Tahrir Square, where Egypt runs from its beginning to its end in one building.
The Hanging Church
A church built on top of a Roman fortress.
The Serapeum
A cemetery for gods who were also cattle.

Aswan High Dam
The monument that ended ancient Egypt's calendar.
Elephantine
A granite island at the first cataract, where Egypt used to end.
Lake Nasser
An archive of ancient Nubia that nobody can visit.
The Unfinished Obelisk
The most famous obelisk in Egypt is the one that never left the ground.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Alexandria's modern library, built as a successor to the most famous library of the ancient world.
Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa
A tomb built for the rich that grew into a city of the dead.
Kom el-Dikka
Roman Alexandria at street level, uncovered in the middle of the modern city.
Pompey's Pillar
A single column of red granite, standing alone among the ruins of one of Alexandria's great temples.
Qaitbay Fort
A Mamluk fortress built on the ruins of the Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders.