Alexandria

After the catacombs, we visited the Bibliotheca Alexandria, a building opened in 2002 on the site of the city's ancient library.

We had a guided tour of the stunning building which was designed by a firm of Norwegian architects. It takes the form of a massive angled disc embedded in the ground to represent the rising sun. The roof is made up of solar panels. The granite exterior walls are inscribed with letters, pictograms, hieroglyphs, and symbols from over 120 languages.

Inside, the incredible main reading 📚 room can accommodate 8 million books (there are currently 2 million in the collection) and 2500 readers, each with their own work station. The sloping roof has windows specially designed to let sunlight flood in but keep out rays that could damage the books. The space is amazing! It felt really conducive to creativity. It made me want to move to Alexandria and get started on that book I've always wanted to write ✍ 😂. Foreigners can join the library and have access to all the facilities for just 10 EGP a year - that's about £3.30!!

The library has eleven floors, some of them below water level. The basement houses four permanent museums and a range of temporary exhibitions. We enjoyed a contemporary ceramics display and a glorious collection of textiles and folk art.

There is also the fascinating Anwar Sadat museum. Here, I was reminded of the news stories of my teenage years. The collection includes the blood stained uniform he was wearing when he was assassinated and the front page of the Daily Mirror when the story broke.

The World of Shadi Abdel Salam was another interesting exhibition. He was an Alexandria-born film director, script writer, set and costume designer who, amongst other things, created all the costumes and sets for Cleopatra which we saw at the Atlas Film Studios in Morocco 🇲🇦.

Outside, there is a striking sphere-shaped planetarium.

I could have spent much longer here than the two hours we were allowed!Read more