Where to stay in Alexandria: the 4 neighborhoods to know in 2026

The center is the city of the 1900s, the one of Cavafy and Durrell: the balconied buildings of Saad Zaghloul square, the cafés of Raml station where the blue tram turns around, the antique dealers of Attarine, Manshia square and its colonnades. The ancient stones are fifteen minutes on foot in every direction: the Roman theater of Kom el-Dikka with its thirteen tiers of marble, the Graeco-Roman Museum reopened in 2023, the National Museum in its Italian palazzo, and to the south, in Karmouz, Pompey's Pillar and the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, three levels cut into the rock. To the west, Anfushi: the mosque of Abu al-Abbas with its cream domes, the fish restaurants of the harbor, and the Qaitbay citadel, built in 1477 with the blocks of the lighthouse, at the end of the breakwater. To the east, the library and its granite disc tilted towards the sea. The hotels are the most beautiful in the city, three palaces of 1902, 1906 and 1929 on the same seafront. The downside: the Corniche under the windows, six lanes of horns until two in the morning, and streets where a woman on her own gets stared at in the evening.

Past the library, the Corniche runs east for twelve kilometers, and the city has laid its residential districts along it one after another, Chatby, Sporting and its club, Cleopatra, Sidi Gaber, the station where the trains from Cairo stop, and behind it Smouha and its malls. At kilometer six, Stanley bridge, six arches and four turrets over a cove of cabins, the city's postcard image since 2001; then San Stefano, the palace of 1887 turned glass tower, with the royal jewelry museum in the villa next door; then Sidi Bishr and its public beaches, packed from June to September. The hotels here have what the center lacks, a private beach and a pool, and the price that goes with it. The downside: nothing old to see, and the Corniche to cross to reach the sea, by footbridge or tunnel, never on foot across the road.

At the end of the Corniche, fifteen kilometers from Raml, the khedive and then King Farouk set their palaces in a hundred and fifty hectares of pines and palms at the water's edge: Montaza. The Haramlik palace of 1932, Florentine and Turkish at once, cannot be visited, but the gardens can, for a few pounds, with their coves, their stone bridge to the islet of the tea house, and families picnicking until nightfall. Two hotels are inside the grounds, the others in Mamoura, the paying beach next door, cleaner and quieter than those of the city. Further on, Abu Qir and its fish restaurants on the bay where Nelson sank Bonaparte's fleet. The downside: the center forty minutes away by taxi, an hour on Friday evening, and hotels that live off the Cairo summer, July and August.

Past the harbor and its cranes, the city stops, and the coast picks up again twenty kilometers further on at Agami: villas and holiday blocks on a beach of white sand, Bianchi, Hannoville, where Cairo comes to spend July and August and where everything closes in November. Behind, Lake Mariout, and on the desert road, Borg el Arab: the city's airport, forty-five kilometers from the center, the stadium of seventy-five thousand seats, and conference hotels in the gardens of King Mariout. Further west still, two ruins that almost nobody visits: Taposiris Magna, its temple of Osiris and its replica of the lighthouse, and Abu Mena, the pilgrimage city of the fourth century, listed and threatened by water. At the end of the road, a hundred kilometers away, El Alamein and its cemeteries. The downside: nothing of the city on foot, and the center an hour away.

What to see & do in the neighborhood

Borg El Arab Stadium