Explore Alexandria

The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue on Nabi Daniel Street stands on the site of a 14th-century synagogue destroyed during the French invasion in 1798. The present 19th-century building has a basilica plan with a women's gallery and a marble ark; after a state restoration it was rededicated in January 2020 and serves the city's very small Jewish community.

Alexandria Opera House, also called the Sayed Darwish Theatre, was built in 1918–1921 to designs by the French architect Georges Parcq and opened as the Mohamed Ali Theatre. Renamed in 1962 after the composer Sayed Darwish and restored in 2000–2004, it hosts opera, ballet, symphony concerts and Arab music by the Cairo Opera House companies and visiting ensembles.

Kom el-Dikka is an excavated quarter in central Alexandria with remains of the Roman and Byzantine city of the 2nd to 6th centuries AD. Its centrepiece is a small marble theatre, or odeon, with tiered seats; nearby lie large public baths, a row of lecture halls and the Villa of the Birds with its floor mosaics.

The Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi Mosque in the Anfushi district is a working mosque and shrine over the tomb of Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi, a 13th-century Sufi master born in Murcia. The present building, rebuilt from 1934 in neo-Mamluk style with domes and a tall minaret, stands on a large paved square; visitors enter outside prayer times.

The Graeco-Roman Museum displays antiquities from Alexandria and its region from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, including statues, sarcophagi, mosaics and coins. Founded in 1892, it moved in 1895 into a purpose-built neoclassical building with a columned portico, which reopened in 2023 after a long renovation.

A rock-cut necropolis of the 2nd century AD in Alexandria, rediscovered in 1900 and used for burials until the 4th century. A spiral staircase around a circular shaft leads down several levels to a main tomb whose reliefs and statues mix Egyptian funerary themes with Greek and Roman dress and architecture.

A Roman triumphal column of red Aswan granite with a Corinthian capital, about 27 metres high, raised in honour of Emperor Diocletian around 298–302 AD despite its later name. It stands on the hill of the ruined Serapeum of Alexandria, where a pair of granite sphinxes and the temple's underground galleries can also be seen.

A Mamluk fortress at the tip of the old Pharos peninsula at the mouth of Alexandria's Eastern Harbour, built in 1477–79 by Sultan al-Ashraf Qaitbay on the site of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria. Inside the outer walls and towers stands a three-storey square keep with round corner towers, and its ramparts look out over the sea and the harbour.

Alexandria National Museum occupies an Italianate palace built for Asaad Basili Pasha and opened as a museum in 2003. Its collection runs from prehistory to the modern era, with objects raised from the sunken sites of Abu Qir Bay, a coin hall, Islamic-era weapons and jewellery of the Muhammad Ali family.

The Royal Jewelry Museum shows jewellery and precious objects of the Muhammad Ali dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1952, in the palace of Princess Fatma al-Zahra in Zizinia, built in 1919. Exhibits include a diamond-set collar of Muhammad Ali, a gold chessboard and jewellery sets made in Europe, in rooms with gilded and painted ceilings.