Alexandria: the library and the lost lighthouse

Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, Alexandria was for centuries the main cultural center of the ancient world thanks to its library, which was lost but is now reinterpreted in a modern structure on the waterfront.

The waterfront and center can be explored comfortably on foot or by historic tram.

An inclined solar disk facing the sea opens the day: it is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, inaugurated in 2002 on the waterfront in tribute to the ancient library destroyed over the centuries, with reading rooms for millions of volumes and an attached planetarium.

Following the Corniche to the tip of the promontory you arrive at the Citadel of Qaitbay, built in the fifteenth century with blocks from the Lighthouse of Alexandria — one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, collapsed after a series of medieval earthquakes — which still occupies the same rocky outcrop above the sea.

Moving toward the interior of the city you descend into the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, where Egyptian, Greek and Roman deities coexist on the same walls carved into rock, direct testimony to how multicultural ancient Alexandria was.

Just steps away, in the same neighborhood, the Column of Pompey closes the visit: despite its name it was erected in the third century in honor of the emperor Diocletian, a wrong attribution made by the Crusaders and never corrected, the only Roman monument still standing in its original position.

Visitors to the Citadel of Qaitbay unknowingly walk literally on the stones of the vanished Lighthouse: the local guide usually tells this only at the end of the visit, like a detail saved deliberately for last.

The city's tram, operating since 1863, ranks among Africa's oldest street railway networks and remains the cheapest way to travel the entire length of the Corniche waterfront.