Alexandria Day Trip from Cairo: Mediterranean History, Seafood & the Library Reborn

Alexandria, Egypt's great Mediterranean city, sits just 225 kilometres north of Cairo — two hours by intercity express train — and offers a day trip so radically different in atmosphere and culture that it functions as an entirely separate travel experience. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and once home to the ancient world's greatest library, Alexandria has an overlay of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Arab history compressed into a coastal city that faces Europe across the sea. The Corniche — a sweeping Mediterranean promenade — is the city's spine, and walking it in the morning light is one of Egypt's great pleasures.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern library built on the site of the ancient one, is architecturally extraordinary and intellectually serious: it houses a world-class collection, planetarium, and several museums within its vast reading rooms. The Qaitbey Citadel at the peninsula's tip stands on the ruins of the ancient Pharos lighthouse. The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, rediscovered by accident in 1900, contain funerary art that fuses Egyptian, Greek, and Roman iconography in genuinely unique ways. Alexandria's seafood — fresh from the Mediterranean, simply grilled or fried at harbour restaurants that have operated for decades — is reason enough to make the trip. Cairo is extraordinary; Alexandria is where you remember that Egypt faces more than one direction.