Alexandria the great

The reconstruction of ancient Alexandria by Hollywood in Oliver Stone’s film Alexander is impressive, but in truth little that is historic still stands. It doesn’t matter - the real treat lies in exploring all that’s new in the city.

I arrive, hot and sticky, at Alexandria’s Ramleh Station clutching my guidebook and my illusions. I lose both in quick succession. I foolishly left the guidebook at the Athineos Patisserie, a wonderful - if expensive - art deco caf with gaping holes in its gilded friezes, a stationary ceiling fan and plenty of noisy locals.

By the time I had walked back to collect it, sea-blown and weary, my glorious preconceptions of Alexandria were as eroded as the city’s historic monuments.

I was particularly disappointed by my first glimpse of Alexandria’s main meeting point. An uninspiring statue of a fez-wearing patriot, Saad Zaghloul, dominates the square that bears his name, framed by cinemas, crumbling colonial offices and dusty palms.

It takes considerable imaginative powers to conjure up the Caesareum that once stood on the site. This is where Queen Cleopatra committed suicide in the temple she had built to honour Mark Antony.

I made my way across the square and checked into the Hotel Cecil where British intelligence operated during the Second World War and Churchill drank his favourite Pol Roger Champagne when he came to demand a quick victory from Monty. Then I set off for a second look around, just in case anything of Cleopatra - or indeed Alexander - was to be found in Midan Saad Zaghloul. It wasn’t.

The last vestiges of the Caesareum - two obelisks moved here by Emperor Augustus from Heliopolis when he rededicated the place to himself - were sold off in the 19th century. One now rests in Central Park, Manhattan, and the other on the Thames Embankment. Both are known as Cleopatra’s Needle, despite the fact that neither of them stood in Alexandria during Cleopatra’s lifetime.

I had been warned that there was no point in looking for the city Alexander constructed when he turned this Mediterranean fishing village into a wonder of the ancient world. His tomb has never been found, his fabulous library is lost, and the mighty Pharos lighthouse, which towered 500 feet above the harbour, collapsed into the sea centuries ago. All that remains of it today is the squat, ugly Fort Qaitbey constructed in the 15th century, out of lighthouse rubble.

Alexandria is not all history and decay though, and realising this is the key to getting the most out of a visit. You must delve into the new city. The Corniche, a scruffy 19th-century dual carriageway that links the fort to Midan Saad Zaghloul and beyond, skirts a colourful sweep of beaches on which young Egyptian families picnic and children play. The harbour is alive with boats.

Meanwhile, at the far eastern end of the Corniche, there rises a huge disc that is the faade of the city’s new library. Opened in 2002, the grandly named Bibliotheca Alexandrina lies behind a reservoir of water which gives it the appearance of a huge, shining sun setting into the sea. Its walls are covered with letters from all the known alphabets in the world, and it deservedly won the Aga Khan award for architecture.

I hail a caleche, one of Alexandria’s distinctive horse-drawn carriages. The driver assumes I want to go to the fort but we agree that for 40 Egyptian pounds (about 3.65) he will take me to the library and on a tour of other new sites. He thinks me odd. I feel conspicuous travelling in a caleche, but it beats dodging Egyptian traffic on foot.

Close up, the Bibliotheca is impressive and a handsome replacement for the lost library of Alexander. The 116 million it cost to build has been well spent. A small black globe rises from the roof line which gives the appearance of a planet orbiting the library. This is the Alexandrian Planetarium and it glows at night with blue fluorescent light.

Beautiful and vast, the library was designed to house eight million books - including a novel by Saddam Hussein who pledged 11 million for its building.

Khaled, my driver, is enjoying a cigarette when I come out. "Now we go Fort Qaitbey, amphitheatre and necropolis?" he asks, but I’m buoyed up by the Bibliotheca and am even more determined now to see modern Alexandria.

So we head off for the new National Museum which opened last year on Fouad Street. This white Italianate villa, built in 1919 as a merchant’s house, was for many years the American Consulate before Italian designer Maurizzo de Paulo converted it into a multicoloured museum with unique diagonal glass showcases in which artefacts are suspended from the ceiling.

The display begins in the basement, painted in dark blue to represent a pharaoh’s trip to the afterlife, and moves forward in time, using 1,800 archaeological finds - Pharaonic mummies, Greek statues, Roman masks, Coptic crosses and Islamic calligraphy - to illustrate the history of Alexandria. For a foreigner it costs 30 Egyptian pounds (about 2.75) to enter and it’s well worth it.

On a circuitous return journey, we pull over in Water Traffic Circle, a little-visited but spectacular development created in the 1920s which contains the avant-garde Villa Aghion, by Auguste Perret, and the impressive Engineering Faculty built in a style known locally as Neo-Pharaonic. Khaled shows me the Museum of Modern Art at Sharia Menasce, which is housed in a villa donated by the wealthy Jewish Menasce family.

Three hours later, we are back at the Corniche. "Now Fort Qaitbey?" Khaled persists and it seems only fair to take a cursory look. I’d clearly spooked him with my lack of interest in Pompey’s Pillar, the remains of Anfushi necropolis and the former Mosque of a Thousand Columns. Close up, the fort was bigger than I’d thought, but still a mere stump compared with the towering reconstruction you see in Oliver Stone’s Alexander.

After a late lunch on the Corniche - grilled shrimp with tehina (sesame paste and spices) and a grilled aubergine salad - we call in to the diving school next door to see how much it might cost to go down and see what had been found in the harbour.

In recent years, looking for Cleopatra’s palace and fragments of the lighthouse underwater has become big business. At a depth of eight metres in the Western Harbour there are said to be columns and sphinxes of the old royal palace, while on the eastern side of Qaitbey we’re promised chunks of Alexander’s lighthouse.

Plans have even been drawn to lay Plexiglas tunnels on the seabed to enable visitors to walk through what remains of ancient Alexandria, but visibility will always be too poor for this underwater museum. You need an aqualung - and a headlamp - to see anything. I decide this might be worth trying another day. Today was devoted to the new Alexandria and it has been rewarding. sm

FACT FILE ALEXANDRIA

Getting there

BMED has four flights to Alexandria a week from Heathrow, priced from 391.50. Tel [phone] or visit www.ba.com for details.

Rooms at the Hotel Sofitel Cecil, Saad Zaghloul 16 start from 40 per night, tel [phone] or visit www.sofitel.com for details.

And there's more

Contact the Egyptian Tourist Office, tel [phone] or visit www.interoz.com/Egypt