2 Best Sights in Alexandria, Egypt

A small but high-quality collection of artifacts includes items found under the waters of the Western Harbor during recent marine archaeological projects. The display galleries cover every era of the city's long history and include Christian pieces, Islamic arts and crafts, and more recent information about Alexandria's colonial era. The early-20th-century Italianate palace that houses the museum, designed by a French architect, is a prime example of this colonial past.

This museum was founded in 1895 and contains the best of the pieces found at Pompey's Pillar—including a statue of the Apis Bull—and two statues from the catacombs at Kom el-Shoqafa. This is Egypt's finest museum covering the period from Alexander the Great's conquest in 332 BC to the third Persian occupation in AD 619. There are a great many pharaonic pieces here as well; indeed, the most impressive thing about the museum is that it shows the scale of cross-fertilization between pharaonic culture and the Greek and Roman cultures that followed. Highlights of the collection include early Christian mummies, remnants of a temple to the crocodile god Sobek, and a courtyard full of sun-drenched statuary.