Alexandria - the 20 km Corniche, a renowned library and an ancient Fort.

Alexandria is a port city located on the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt. Founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great. It is most famous in antiquity as the site of the Pharos, the great lighthouse, considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The city was also known for its library (see my travel blog: Alexandria's Library - an unbelievably beautiful unusual structure housing a  mammoth heritage), and once, the largest and most prosperous city in the world. The city grew from a small port town to become the grandest and most important metropolis in ancient Egypt. 

 “The city grew to become the largest in the known world at the time, attracting scholars, scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, artists, and 

historians.  

Eratosthenes (c.276-194 BCE) calculated the circumference of the earth to within 50 miles (80 km) at Alexandria. Euclid taught at the university there.  Archimedes (287-212 BCE) the great mathematician and astronomer certainly studied there and may have taught there.  The greatest engineer and mathematician of his day, Hero (also known as Heron, 10-70 CE) was born and lived in Alexandria. Hero was credited with amazing feats in engineering and technology including the first vending machine, the force-pump, and a theatre of automated figures who danced, among his other inventions”.

Following Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, and the death of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra,   Alexandria now became a simple province of the Roman Empire under the rule of Augustus Caesar. Alexandria, which had been a city of prosperity and learning, became an arena of religious contention between the new faith of the Christians and the old faith of the pagan majority.  In 391 CE the Christian Patriarch Theophilus had all the pagan temples in Alexandria destroyed or converted into churches.  By the year 400 CE Alexandria was in constant religious turmoil. What was not destroyed by war was taken down by nature and, by 1323 CE, most of Ptolemaic Alexandria was gone. By the time Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, Alexandria had been reduced to a small Ottoman port. 

Alexandria’s rebirth began when Muḥammad ʿAlī was appointed Ottoman viceroy and pasha of Egypt in 1805. Seeking to use Egypt as a base from which to expand his own power, he reopened Alexandria’s access to the Nile by building the 45-mile (72-km) long Al-Maḥmūdiyyah Canal (completed between 1818 and 1820), as well as an arsenal in which to locally produce the warships intended to rebuild his fleet. The opening of the Cairo railway in 1856, the cotton boom created by the American Civil War in the early 1860s, and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which re-established Egypt as the principal staging post to India, led to another cycle of growth and to a rapid increase in both the indigenous and foreign populations.

We went for lunch to the much touted and famed Greek Club. It has a superb view but maybe we were in the wrong dining room. Not being members, we could not enter the ground floor area so we had lunch upstairs. The food was okay but the view was well worth it. 

The last visit in Alexandria was the Citadel of Qait Bay -- a 15th C defensive fortress built in 1477 AD by Sultan al Ashraf Sayf al Din Qa’it Bey. It was an important port of the fortification system of the city against the Turks. It was operational during the Mameluke, Ottoman and the Modern period. 

We first walked inside the citadel, right up the rather uneven steps to the third floor. The view was rather limited as the walls are extremely thick... the turrets are deep. It’s like looking through the other end of a pair of binoculars. The fortress is a ruin. Empty. The walk around the ramparts was a bit better in that these walls are better maintained but there were sections where children could easily fall far below. The view was of the sea and the city. I much preferred the walk on the Corniche. 

The Sultan’s story is interesting in that he had come to Egypt as a young man, less than 20 years old. 


Bought by Al-Ashraf Bersbay, he remained among his attendants until Al-Ashraf Bersbay died. Then the Sultan Djaqmaq bought Qaitbay, and later gave him his freedom. Qaitbay then went on to occupy various posts. He became the Chief of the Army (Atabec Al-Askar) during the rule of the Sultan Tamar bugha. When the Sultan was dethroned, Qaitbay was appointed as a Sultan who was titled Almalek Al-Ashraf

It had been an exhausting day as we had toured the library in depth and seen many sights. We had now a three hour journey back to Cairo but at least I can say that I had the satisfaction of seeing the city in close up. 

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