Ten institutions across five governorates, from Alexandria on the Mediterranean to Abu Simbel above the Tropic of Cancer. All honoured by a single credential.
The long-awaited successor to the Tahrir institution: a five-hundred-thousand-square-metre complex sitting in a clear sightline to the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Holds the complete Tutankhamun assemblage for the first time since the tomb's discovery, a grand staircase lined with eighty-seven royal statues, and visible conservation laboratories. Allow a full day; the galleries are, deliberately, not small.
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Marcel Dourgnon's 1902 neoclassical building on the north side of Midan Tahrir — pink-limestone façade, rotunda, and the tall iron windows of a late-Belle-Époque museum. Although the full Tutankhamun material has migrated to Giza, Tahrir retains the Narmer Palette, the Meidum Geese and the Royal Mummy Hall, and its displays are an indispensable primer.
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A small, supremely curated gallery on the Corniche el-Nil, famous for the cache of statuary discovered beneath the courtyard of Luxor Temple in 1989 — including a wonderfully preserved Amenhotep III in black granite. Evening openings make it the ideal late-afternoon stop before a riverside dinner.
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Opened in 1997 with UNESCO support, the Nubian Museum is the principal record of the civilisation that lay above the first cataract of the Nile before the High Dam. Ethnographic galleries, prehistoric petroglyphs recovered from the rising waters, and a quiet outdoor garden worth an hour on its own.
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One of the great collections of Islamic decorative art anywhere in the world: Mamluk inlaid metalwork, Ottoman textiles, Fatimid rock-crystal vessels, and a series of mashrabiya screens that almost inventory the craft. The 1903 building was itself restored after the 2014 bomb blast that damaged its façade.
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Tucked within the walled quarter south of the old Roman fortress of Babylon, the Coptic Museum holds the largest collection of Coptic Christian artefacts on earth, including early fragments of the Nag Hammadi codices and some extraordinary woven tapestries of the fourth and fifth centuries.
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Housed in a converted Italianate villa on Tariq el-Horreya, the museum reads the Mediterranean city in three chronological layers — Pharaonic, Graeco-Roman and Coptic-Islamic — including submarine archaeology from the harbour floor around Qaitbay. A manageable two-hour visit.
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Within the Amun-Ra precinct at Karnak stands a quieter annex — the Open-Air Museum — where reassembled Middle Kingdom chapels, including the alabaster chapel of Amenhotep I and the White Chapel of Senwosret I, reward the visitor who has the stamina for a second hour after the main temple.
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Sixty-three discovered tombs, of which a rotating selection of three is typically open on any given day. The pass covers general admission; the tombs of Tutankhamun (KV62), Seti I and Ramesses VI require a small supplement at the gate, clearly marked. Photography is now permitted with the pass.
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The two rock-cut temples of Ramesses II and his queen Nefertari, relocated above the rising waters of the reservoir in 1968 in the great UNESCO salvage operation. Twice each year, on 22 February and 22 October, the rising sun penetrates the inner sanctum — a small festival of patience and astronomy.
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