The catalogue
Grouped the way you would actually travel between them. Each entry says what the collection is for, what makes it worth the detour, and how much of a day it will take.
Region one · Six museums
Everything here is within an hour of Tahrir Square by taxi, and three of the six are on the metro. Give the region three days if you want to see it properly rather than tick it off.
Two decades in construction and the largest museum in the world devoted to a single civilisation. A translucent alabaster facade faces the desert; inside, a colossus of Ramesses II stands in a six-storey atrium and a grand staircase of royal statues climbs towards a glass wall framing the pyramids. The complete contents of Tutankhamun's tomb are displayed together, and Khufu's solar boat has its own hall.
The founding collection, in Marcel Dourgnon's pink neoclassical building on the north side of the square. Much of the star material has gone to Giza, but the halls remain full: Old Kingdom statuary, the Amarna gallery, Yuya and Thuya's burial goods, and the faintly Victorian pleasure of glass cases with typewritten labels.
Arranged by theme rather than dynasty, from the Palaeolithic through the pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic periods to the twentieth century. The reason most people come is downstairs: the Royal Mummies Hall, where twenty-two kings and queens were installed after the 2021 procession across Cairo.
One of the great collections of Islamic material anywhere: carved woodwork, enamelled mosque lamps, metalwork, textiles, ceramics and scientific instruments from Spain to India. The building was badly damaged by a car bomb in 2014 and reopened in 2017 after a long restoration.
Founded by Marcus Simaika inside the walls of the Roman fortress of Babylon, and worth visiting for the carved wooden ceilings and mashrabiya screens as much as the collection. It holds textiles, icons, frescoes lifted from desert monasteries, and part of the Nag Hammadi library of Gnostic codices.
A small site museum at the entrance to the Saqqara necropolis, named after the architect of the Step Pyramid. It shows what excavation at Saqqara has produced — faience tiles from Djoser's underground galleries, the base of his statue bearing Imhotep's name, coffins and surgical instruments — before you walk out into the sand.
Region two · Three museums
Two on the Luxor corniche, ten minutes apart on foot, and one above the first cataract in Aswan. All three are small, well lit and mercifully uncrowded compared with the temples.
Often called the best-curated museum in the country: few objects, superbly lit, with room to walk around them. Two highlights are the wall of talatat blocks reassembled from Akhenaten's dismantled Karnak temple, and the statue cache found buried under the court of Luxor Temple in 1989.
A single subject, treated properly. The display walks through the seventy-day embalming process with the actual tools — hooks, resins, natron, canopic jars — and includes the mummy of the Twenty-first Dynasty priest Maserharti alongside mummified cats, fish and a crocodile.
Built as the permanent home for what UNESCO's rescue campaign saved before Lake Nasser flooded Nubia. The collection runs from prehistory to the Islamic period, and the building — terraced local sandstone around an open court — won an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001.
Region three · Three museums
Alexandria is two hours from Cairo by train and holds two very different collections. Sharm El Sheikh's museum was built to give Red Sea visitors something to do that is not a reef.
An Italianate merchant's villa on Fouad Street, arranged over three floors that read as a vertical timeline: pharaonic in the basement, Greco-Roman on the ground floor, Coptic and Islamic above. A room of underwater finds recovered from the harbour makes the case that most of ancient Alexandria is still offshore.
The palace of Princess Fatma al-Zahraa, kept more or less as she left it, holding the jewels and personal objects of the Muhammad Ali dynasty. The stained-glass windows and painted bathrooms are as much of an attraction as the diamond-set watches and enamelled snuffboxes.
Egypt's newest regional museum, on the road to Naama Bay, with several thousand objects drawn from stores across the country. The themes are chosen for people who have just come off a boat: daily life, adornment, animals in ancient Egypt, and a hall devoted to the Nile.
At a glance
Adult entry for international visitors, in Egyptian pounds. Students pay half with a valid card, children 6–12 pay a quarter, and under-6s go free.
| Museum | City | Opened | Adult | Allow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Egyptian Museum | Giza | 2025 | EGP 1,450 | A full day |
| Egyptian Museum, Tahrir | Cairo | 1902 | EGP 550 | 3 hours |
| Museum of Egyptian Civilisation | Cairo | 2021 | EGP 500 | 3 hours |
| Museum of Islamic Art | Cairo | 1903 | EGP 350 | 2 hours |
| Coptic Museum | Cairo | 1908 | EGP 300 | 90 minutes |
| Imhotep Museum | Saqqara | 2006 | EGP 200 | 40 minutes |
| Luxor Museum | Luxor | 1975 | EGP 400 | 90 minutes |
| Mummification Museum | Luxor | 1997 | EGP 200 | 1 hour |
| Nubian Museum | Aswan | 1997 | EGP 300 | 2 hours |
| Alexandria National Museum | Alexandria | 2003 | EGP 350 | 2 hours |
| Royal Jewellery Museum | Alexandria | 1986 | EGP 300 | 90 minutes |
| Sharm El Sheikh Museum | Sharm El Sheikh | 2020 | EGP 400 | 90 minutes |
