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Alexandria was best known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its Great Library, the largest in the ancient world; and the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages.
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Alexandria, major city and urban muḥāfaẓah (governorate) in Egypt. Once among the greatest cities of the Mediterranean world and a centre of Hellenic scholarship and science, Alexandria was the capital of Egypt from its founding by Alexander the Great in 332 bce until its surrender to the Arab forces led by ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ in 642 ce. One of Egypt’s...
Alexandria has long occupied a special place in the popular imagination by virtue of its association with Alexander and Cleopatra. Alexandria played an important role in preserving and transmitting Hellenic culture to the wider Mediterranean world and was a crucible of scholarship, piety, and ecclesiastical politics in early Christian history. Although it has been asserted that Alexandria declined as a result of its conquest by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century ce, such a statement is misleading. While the city’s political primacy was lost when the capital was moved to the interior, Alexandria remained an important centre of naval operations, maritime commerce, and craft production. As late as the 15th century, the city prospered as a transit point in the trade conducted between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean basin.
Beginning in the 16th century, however, the city suffered a period of protracted decline owing to epidemic disease and administrative neglect; by the end of the 18th century, traces of Alexandria’s former splendour had largely vanished. By the time French troops invaded Egypt in 1798, Alexandria had been reduced to a town of some 10,000 inhabitants, significant mainly for its role in Ottoman maritime networks. Flourishing in the 19th century as a major centre of the booming cotton industry, the modern city had come to bear little in common with the ancient metropolis.
Alexandria has generally been characterized by a cultural ambivalence inherent in the city’s location—extending along a spit of land with its back to Egypt and its face to the Mediterranean. Throughout most of its history, Alexandria has thus remained a cosmopolitan town, belonging as much—or perhaps more—to the wider Mediterranean world as to its hinterland. The revival of the town in the 19th century, however, brought about a profound change in the city’s identity. With the significant increase in agricultural exports, the influx of native Egyptians to the city, and the formation and integration of the Egyptian state, Alexandria became tied to the Nile valley more closely than ever before. As a result, it also became the locus of an emergent Egyptian national consciousness.
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Beginning in the mid-18th century, these underlying changes would be overshadowed for roughly a century by the rise to power of a Levantine business community. Foreign dominance was reinforced by the overlay of British colonialism beginning in 1882 and by the formation of a foreign-dominated municipality in 1890. The arts flourished during this century-long interlude, and the city still boasts fine Neoclassical and Art Nouveau architecture dating from this period. The literary side of the city’s flowering is reflected in the works of the Alexandria-born Greek writer Constantine Cavafy, who drew on Alexandria’s fabled past in his poetry. Likewise, the decadent cosmopolitanism of the foreign community in Alexandria was depicted by the English writer Lawrence Durrell in his famous series of novels, The Alexandria Quartet (1957–60). A contrasting portrayal of the modern city is given in Naguib Mahfouz’s Miramar (1967); set in postcolonial Alexandria, Mahfouz’s novella offers a view of the city as an integral part of Egyptian history and society. This process of integration was accelerated after the 1952 revolution, when most of the remaining foreign residents departed.
The modern city extends 25 miles (40 km) east to west along a limestone ridge, 1–2 miles (1.6–3.2 km) wide, that separates the salt lake of Maryūṭ, or Mareotis—now partly drained and cultivated—from the Egyptian mainland. An hourglass-shaped promontory formed by the silting up of a mole (the Heptastadion), which was built soon after Alexandria’s fo...
The prevailing north wind, blowing across the Mediterranean, gives Alexandria a markedly different climate from that of the desert hinterland. The summers are relatively temperate, although humidity can build up in July and in August, the hottest month, when the average temperature reaches 87 °F (31 °C). Winters are cool and invariably marked by a ...
Jul 18, 2023 · Alexandria is a port city on the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great. It was the site of the Pharos (lighthouse), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the legendary Library of Alexandria and was once the most vital cultural center of the ancient world, rivaling even Athens, Greece.
- Joshua J. Mark
- Alexandria, Egypt was founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great who named it after himself.
- Alexandria, Egypt was an important intellectual, cultural, and commercial center. It was located on the Mediterranean Sea on the Nile Delta and so...
- The Lighthouse of Alexandria was located where the 15th century Fort Qaitbey stands today.
- Alexandria, Egypt began to decline in the 4th and 5th centuries CE due to religious intolerance which sparked civil unrest. By the 7th century CE,...
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- Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Alexandria’s ancient library was one of the greatest of all classical institutions, and while replacing it might seem a Herculean task, the new…
- Alexandria National Museum. This excellent museum sets a high benchmark with its summary of Alexandria’s past. Housed in a beautifully restored Italianate villa, the small but…
- Mahmoud Said Museum. Mahmoud Said (1897–1964) was one of Egypt’s finest 20th-century artists, even though he is little known outside his country.
- Catacombs of Kom Ash Shuqqafa. Discovered accidentally in 1900 when a donkey disappeared through the ground, these catacombs make up the largest-known Roman burial site in Egypt and one…
- Explore the Museums of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Most visitors to Alexandria beeline first to this modern re-imagining of Alexandria's ancient Great Library.
- Stroll the Corniche. Downtown Alexandria's wide, waterfront Corniche Road is as much a symbol of the city as any of its monuments. Strolling the Corniche, particularly the section between the main shorefront square of Midan Saad Zaghloul to Fort Qaitbey on the Eastern Harbor's western tip, gives you a real feel for the era of cosmopolitan elegance and decadence that marked this city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Head Underground at the Catacombs of Kom el-Shuqqafa. The Catacombs of Kom el-Shuqqafa are hewn from the rock on the southern slopes of a hill, in the Carmous district.
- Fort Qaitbey. Walk the long shorefront Corniche road of the Eastern Harbor heading west, and you'll finally arrive at Fort Qaitbey. It may be a poor substitute for what was once the site of the mighty Pharos Lighthouse–one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which was toppled by a violent earthquake in 1303–but this squat fort has been standing guard over Alexandria since 1480.
Discover the ancient wonders and cultural heritage of Alexandria, Egypt's magnificent city by the sea. Learn about its landmarks, attractions, cuisine, and tips for your visit in this comprehensive guide.
Sep 13, 2024 · Alexander the Great founded the city in 332 bce after the start of his Persian campaign; it was to be the capital of his new Egyptian dominion and a naval base that would control the Mediterranean.
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