Things to Do in Alexandria, Egypt: An Honest, Ranked List

Before the list: what Alexandria in Egypt actually is

Alexandria is Egypt's second city, a working port of roughly five million people facing the Mediterranean rather than the desert. Alexander the Great founded it in 331 BC, at the very end of the pharaonic era, and it was Greek from the start. After his death it became the capital of the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt for the best part of three centuries and ended with Cleopatra, the last of the line. The story then runs Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and modern. The pharaohs barely feature.

Fix that in your head before you plan a single hour here, because almost every complaint about Alexandria comes from the gap between the city people expect and the city that exists. Under the Ptolemies and Rome this was one of the great cities of the ancient Mediterranean, a port and a centre of learning. That version is essentially gone, and not through one catastrophe: sieges, earthquakes, the loss of status once Rome and later Constantinople mattered more, and the slow silting and rebuilding that buries an old city under a living one. The ancient street plan lies beneath the modern grid and, in places, beneath the harbour.

So what you are choosing between below is not a set of ruins. It is a second-century tomb complex, a fifteenth-century fort on the foundations of a lost wonder, a small Roman theatre, a museum, a modern library that borrowed a famous name, and a long seafront with very good fish on it. Some of that is genuinely worth the journey. Some of it takes twenty minutes and no more, and we say which is which. If temples and tombs are what you came to Egypt for, the honest answer is on our page about whether Alexandria is worth a day trip, and it is usually no.

1. The catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, and why they come first

If you see one thing in Alexandria, see this. Kom el Shoqafa is a second-century AD burial complex cut down through rock, reached by a spiral staircase that winds around an open central shaft, and it is the single strongest site in the city by a clear margin. What lifts it above a set of tombs is the carving. Egyptian, Greek and Roman styles share the same walls, and the image everybody remembers is the jackal-headed Anubis turned out in a Roman soldier's uniform.

That mixing is the whole argument for Alexandria in one room. Everywhere else in Egypt you look at a single tradition doing what it did for three thousand years. Here you are looking at three traditions in one family tomb, because the people buried in it lived in a Greek city under Roman rule in Egypt and saw no contradiction in any of it. Nothing at Giza, Luxor or Aswan shows you that, which is the one genuine reason to come north.

Two practical notes. The lowest level is usually flooded, so you will not see all of it, and the main chambers are the point rather than a loss. And the stairs are a hard constraint: a spiral staircase wrapped around an open shaft, then low, damp passages on uneven ground, with no lift and no wheelchair access. There is nothing equivalent to see from the top, so anyone unsteady on their feet should know in advance that the best thing in Alexandria may be out of reach. Give it unhurried time, and put it first in the day rather than last.

2. Qaitbay Citadel, on the site of the Pharos lighthouse

The one ancient thing everyone has heard of is the lighthouse, and it is gone. The Pharos of Alexandria stood at the entrance to the harbour and was counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. It came down over centuries, earthquakes among the causes, and by the time Sultan Qaitbay built his fort on the spot in the 1470s there was fallen stone lying about to reuse in the walls. That is the honest state of it: no lighthouse to see, only the place where one stood and a medieval fort partly made of its rubble.

It is still worth the walk out, for the position rather than the building. Qaitbay Citadel occupies the exact tip of land at the western end of the eastern harbour, and standing on the ramparts you are looking out over the harbour mouth the lighthouse guided ships through. The fort is largely empty inside, so go expecting sea on three sides, the Corniche curving away, and fishing boats below, not rooms full of exhibits.

Half an hour on the ramparts is right for most people, longer if the light is good and you want to sit with it. Do it late in the afternoon with the sun behind you. Paired with a slow stretch of the Corniche, the western harbour makes an easy couple of hours that costs nothing in stamina, which is a useful counterweight to the stairs at the catacombs earlier in the day.

3. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and what it is not

The Library of Alexandria was not burned down in one night. It declined over centuries: fire during Caesar's siege in 48 BC, the loss of royal funding, scholars drifting elsewhere, the general unravelling of the city under Roman rule. By late antiquity it had stopped functioning. Nothing of it survives, and its exact site is not even known. There is no ancient library in Alexandria to visit, and any itinerary that implies otherwise is selling you a name.

What you can visit is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002 on the Corniche at Shatby, near where the ancient royal quarter stood. It is a working library and cultural centre rather than a reconstruction, and the reading room is the reason to go in: a huge tilted disc of a building, stepped floors, daylight coming through the angled roof. There are small museums inside, including antiquities and manuscripts, which most visitors walk past on their way to the view down the stepped floors.

Read as contemporary civic architecture and a genuine research institution, it is impressive and it is the best modern building in Egypt that most visitors never see. Read as a window onto the ancient library, it is a name and little else, and the people who came for the second thing leave flat. An hour covers it unless you like libraries, in which case take two. This is the site where managing your own expectation does more for your day than any guide can.

4. The Graeco-Roman Museum and Kom el-Dikka

The Graeco-Roman Museum reopened in 2023 after a long closure and holds the best of what has been dug out of the city and raised from its harbour. It is also the site that rushed visits skip entirely, which is the wrong way round: in a city where most of the ancient stone is under the streets or under the water, the museum is where the ancient city is actually visible and cleaned up enough to read. If you have half a day for the Greek and Roman side of Alexandria, this belongs in it.

Kom el-Dikka sits a short distance away and is the other half of that block. It is a small, well-preserved Roman theatre and the remains of a bath house, dug out of the middle of the modern city, and the surprise is the setting rather than the scale: an ancient civic space with apartment blocks standing over it. It does not take long and it does not need to.

These two and the catacombs sit close enough to do as one geographic block, and doing them that way rather than scattering them across the map is worth an hour of your day in a city this size. They are also the three that most need a guide, for reasons we come back to below: the interest is historical rather than visual, and the on-site labelling is thin.

5. Pompey's Pillar, which takes twenty minutes

Pompey's Pillar has nothing to do with Pompey. It is a single tall granite column raised for the emperor Diocletian around AD 298 and misnamed long afterwards, standing on a low hill inland with a couple of sphinxes about it. It is genuinely impressive as an object and it is over quickly.

Twenty minutes is the honest figure, and we would rather say so than pad it. It is worth including because it is near the catacombs and costs almost nothing in time, and it is not worth crossing the city for on its own. If your day is running late, this is the first thing to drop without regret, which is the opposite of the advice you will get from an itinerary that counts sites rather than hours.

6. The Corniche at dusk, which is free and is the point

The long curve of the Corniche is the thing people are actually describing when they come back saying Alexandria was the best part of their trip. It is a flat seafront walk of several kilometres with the harbour on one side and the city on the other, and it does its best work in the hour before dark, when the heat drops, the light goes long across the water, and the whole city comes out to walk on it.

Treat it as an activity rather than a transfer between sites. It costs nothing, it needs no ticket and no guide, and it is the clearest demonstration that Alexandria is a place to spend an evening in rather than a checklist to clear before dark. Crossing the Corniche road, on the other hand, takes nerve: the traffic is heavy and constant, so cross where everyone else crosses and go when they go.

The reason this ranks above three of the monuments is simple arithmetic. The sites in Alexandria are good without being extraordinary, and a visitor who sees only the sites is quite reasonable to conclude the journey was not worth it. The evening is what the city has that Luxor and Aswan do not, and it is the first casualty of any plan built around getting back to Cairo.

7. Eating fish at Anfoushi, chosen by weight off the ice

Alexandria is where you eat fish in Egypt, and it does it better than anywhere else in the country. The form is worth knowing before you sit down, because it catches people out: you choose your fish by weight from a bed of ice at the front of the restaurant, and it comes back grilled or fried with salads and bread. Agree what you are ordering and roughly what it weighs at the ice rather than at the table.

The seafront around Anfoushi, near the western harbour, is the obvious place for it, with the day's catch laid out to pick from. This is a genuine pleasure of the city and one of the few things in Egypt that improves on its reputation rather than falling short of it. It also happens at dinner, which is exactly when a day trip is on the road back to Cairo, and that timing is half the argument for staying the night.

Away from the fish, Alexandria eats like the rest of Egypt: ful and taameya at breakfast, koshari at lunch for very little money. Our page on Egyptian food covers that ground. Here, spend the meal you care about on the seafood and do not be talked into a hotel restaurant.

8. Downtown: the old cafes, the faded facades and Cavafy's flat

The city you walk today is largely a nineteenth- and twentieth-century one, built when Alexandria was a cosmopolitan trading port with large Greek, Italian and other foreign communities. That century is where the faded European facades downtown come from, and the old Greek and Italian cafes with the fittings still in place, and the flat kept as a small museum for the Greek-Alexandrian poet Cavafy.

An unhurried coffee in one of those cafes is part of what the city is for, and the register is noticeably more European and slower than Cairo. The Cavafy flat is a small, quiet stop that means a great deal to people who know the poems and very little to people who do not, and we would not pretend otherwise. The downtown grid itself is walkable, which is the real point: this is the only large Egyptian city where wandering without a destination is a reasonable way to spend a morning.

Be honest with yourself about whether that appeals. Some visitors find a morning of shabby Mediterranean facades and old coffee houses thin, and want a monument at the end of it. If that is you, Alexandria is a one-day city at most, and the list above is your whole visit.

9. The sunken city in the eastern harbour, and whether to dive it

When people say the ancient city is under the harbour, they mean it literally. Remains of the old royal quarter and of the lighthouse lie in shallow water in the eastern harbour, close to shore, and a good deal of what survives of ancient Alexandria is on that seabed rather than in the open air. Some of it has been raised: a number of the sphinxes and reused blocks you see around the city, and pieces now in the museum, came up out of that water rather than out of the ground.

You can dive on the submerged remains with a certified operator, and the expectation to carry is a modest one. The eastern harbour is silted and shallow, visibility is often only a metre or two, and whether a dive runs at all depends on the weather that day. Divers with a specific interest in the archaeology enjoy it for what it is. Most visitors get considerably more from the pieces that have been lifted out and cleaned up, where you can see what you are looking at.

It is still worth understanding even if you never get in the water, because it explains the city. Alexandria disappoints people who expect ruins because its ruins are mostly not somewhere you can walk among them: they are under the modern streets, buried by later building, or under the sea after subsidence and earthquakes rearranged the coastline. The past here is out of reach rather than absent, which is a more interesting problem than nothing having survived.

10. The beaches, and who the seafront is actually for

Alexandria is not a beach holiday and should not be sold as one. The city beaches are narrow, busy and hemmed in by the Corniche traffic behind a low wall, and the water near the harbours is not something we would recommend swimming in. The sea here is what makes the city pleasant to be in, for the breeze and the light and the long curve of the shore, rather than something you get into.

If swimming genuinely matters, the quieter stretches run east towards Montazah and Maamoura and are better than anything in the centre. Note also that local women swim clothed, and a swimsuit on a city beach draws attention, so this is not a coast where you behave as you would on a Mediterranean beach further north. Away from the water, ordinary travel clothes are fine.

It helps to know who the seafront belongs to. July and August are the busy months here, when Egyptians themselves fill the beaches, because summer in Alexandria runs at around 30C against Luxor's 40C and the city sits several degrees cooler than Cairo with a sea breeze behind it. This is where Egypt comes to escape its own heat. The crowd on the sand in August is a domestic holiday crowd, not a tourist one, which is part of the city's appeal and the reason a foreign visitor in a swimsuit is the odd thing on that beach.

What is overrated in Alexandria, and what to skip

Overrated, in order. The library, if you came for the ancient one, for the reasons set out above. Any tour billed on Cleopatra or on ancient Alexandria, because there is essentially nothing of either to stand in front of and the billing is doing the work the sites cannot. And the harbour dive for anyone who is not already a diver with an interest in archaeology, because a metre of visibility over silt is not the experience the phrase sunken city suggests.

Skip without guilt: the city beaches, a boat trip sold purely for the harbour view when the Qaitbay ramparts give you the same thing standing still, and any plan that includes a fourth or fifth monument at the end of a day that already has the catacombs, the museum block and the citadel in it. Alexandria has a small number of good sites and a large amount of atmosphere, and trading the second for more of the first is the commonest way to have a bad day here.

Better than their reputation: the Graeco-Roman Museum, which most itineraries drop and which is where the ancient city is actually legible; Kom el-Dikka, for the oddness of a Roman theatre standing under apartment blocks; and the plain evening walk on the Corniche, which no brochure lists as a thing to do because nobody can sell it to you.

Day trip or overnight? The honest answer

A day trip from Cairo works in the sense that it is possible and people sell it. It is a long day for what it is. You leave before dawn, you see three sites at pace, and you are back after dark. Everything on this list from the Corniche downwards, which is most of the city's case, is precisely the part a day trip cuts, because it happens in the evening.

One night is the sensible minimum and two is better. That is not an upsell: it is the difference between visiting three monuments and visiting a city. One night buys the Corniche at dusk and fish at Anfoushi. A second buys a slow downtown morning with no departure hanging over it.

The prior question is whether Alexandria belongs in this trip at all. If you have seven days and have not seen Luxor or Aswan, go south instead. The pharaonic sites are stronger and Alexandria will still be here. At ten days or more, or on a second trip where the Nile is already done, it earns a night or two comfortably. We set that calculation out in full on our page on whether Alexandria is worth a day trip.

Getting there from Cairo: train, car and the checkpoints

Alexandria is roughly 220 kilometres from Cairo. The fast trains take about two and a half hours and are the civilised option. By road it is about three hours each way, longer if Cairo traffic is having a bad morning, and the desert road itself is fast divided highway and not the problem.

The problem is that road times in Egypt are not promises. Security checkpoints sit on most intercity routes and foreign passengers are routinely asked for passport details, so keep a passport or a copy within reach. Most checks take a couple of minutes and occasionally one takes far longer. Cairo's own congestion adds another unknown at either end. Put that together and a return day is five to six hours of travelling before you have looked at anything, with the uncertainty landing at the end of the day rather than the start, which is why the last site on any list is the one that gets cut.

So take the train if you can. It is not at the mercy of the traffic or the checkpoints, and it leaves and arrives more or less when it says it will. The only real argument for a car is wanting to stop on the way, and the Cairo to Alexandria desert road gives you no reason to. Our page on getting around Egypt covers the trains in more detail.

One day in Alexandria, in the right order

The order is not arbitrary, because one site is much better than the rest and one part of the city is compact. Start with the catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa. It is the strongest thing here, it rewards unhurried time, and putting it first is the only way to protect it from a morning that runs late.

Then do the Graeco-Roman block as one piece: Kom el-Dikka and the Graeco-Roman Museum, with Pompey's Pillar as a quick add-on. That is the part that most needs someone to explain it and the part a rushed day cuts first, so front-loading it is the whole trick. The library and a stretch of the Corniche fill the middle of the day.

Finish at Qaitbay Citadel at the western end of the harbour, late, with the light behind you and the fishing boats below. Half an hour on the ramparts is enough. If you are staying the night, the evening writes itself from there: the Corniche walk, then fish chosen off the ice near Anfoushi. If you are not, you are already on the road while the best hour of the day happens without you.

What a second day adds

A second day is where Alexandria stops being a list of sites and starts being a place. Use it for a slow downtown morning among the faded facades and the old cafes, an unhurried lunch, and time simply spent on the Corniche. Add the Cavafy flat if the poems mean something to you and leave it out if they do not.

If you want one more structured stop, make it the Graeco-Roman Museum properly rather than at speed, or a walk east along the seafront towards the quieter beaches. Beyond two nights, most visitors have seen what they came for, and we would rather say that than pad a third day out of a city that does not have one.

The honest ceiling matters here because it shapes the whole trip. Alexandria asks for two days to be worth doing and gives very little back on the third. On a fortnight that is easy to accommodate at the start or the end, either side of the international flights that land in Cairo anyway. On a first week it is two days you do not have.

The month you go changes what is on this list

Alexandria runs on a different calendar from the rest of Egypt, and this is the part visitors get wrong most often. Summer here is around 30C rather than the 40C of Luxor, so July and August are the busy months and the seafront fills with Egyptian holidaymakers. That is the reverse of the pattern further south, where summer is the season to avoid.

Winter is the trap. It is mild but genuinely wet by Egyptian standards: Alexandria gets more rain than almost anywhere else in the country, roughly 200 millimetres a year, where Cairo averages about 20, and a grey, blustery week in January is normal. Look again at this list and notice how much of it is outdoors. A wet January day deletes the Corniche, the downtown walk and the position at Qaitbay, and leaves you with three indoor stops and a long journey.

Spring and autumn are the reliable choice: warm, dry enough, and the sites are quiet. If your Egypt dates fall in those months, Alexandria is worth the overnight. If they fall in the depths of winter, spend the days elsewhere. It is the one part of the country where the season argues against going rather than simply against the hour you set out, and our best time to visit Egypt page sets the coast against the valley month by month.

Practicalities: hassle, walking, dress and whether to hire a guide

This is a working city of several million people, not a resort, and it behaves like one. The downtown grid is walkable and the Corniche is a long flat walk, though crossing the Corniche road takes nerve, traffic is heavy and pavements are uneven. Taxis are cheap and easy. Hassle is noticeably lighter than in Luxor or at the pyramids, because far fewer visitors come, which is one of the quiet pleasures of being here and a reason to slow down rather than speed up.

Dress is more conservative than you might expect on a Mediterranean seafront, particularly near the water. English is widely understood downtown and less so in the western districts. None of this is difficult, but it is a different register from a tourist strip, and treating it as one is how visitors get themselves noticed.

On guides: you do not need one to walk the Corniche or visit the library. You do want one for the catacombs, Kom el-Dikka and the Graeco-Roman Museum, where the labelling is thin and the interest is historical rather than visual. A column, a small theatre and a set of rock-cut tombs do not explain themselves, and a visitor left with the signage will come away thinking Alexandria has very little in it. If you pay for one guided half-day here, spend it on those three.

How Alexandria fits with our Egypt trips

Plainly: none of our sixteen itineraries includes Alexandria as standard. They are built around the pharaonic core, because that is what almost everyone comes for and what the days are best spent on. We would rather tell you that than quietly slot a coastal day into a first trip that needs its time elsewhere.

Where it does work is as an added night or two either side of Cairo. The natural pairing is the Cairo Short Break, five days at US$935 per person, land only, in one hotel with no internal flights: that trip already spends its time in and around Cairo, and the fast train makes an Alexandria day or overnight a reasonable extension rather than a raid. At the other end, the Grand Tour of Egypt runs sixteen days from US$3,910 per person and covers Cairo, Aswan, a Nile cruise, Luxor and the Red Sea, and a trip of that length has room for a coastal night at the start or the end without cutting anything.

What we would not do is drop Alexandria into the middle of a Nile itinerary. It costs two travel days and breaks the run south, which is the last thing a cruise-based trip needs. If you want it, ask for it at the top or the tail of the trip, next to the international flights that land in Cairo anyway, and give it two nights or none.