Egypt Guide
Alexandria and the Mediterranean coast
Kom el-Dikka
Opening time: daily 9am–5pm; Ramadan until 3pm
Price: £E15
In 1959 Polish archeologists searching for Alexander's tomb were licensed to excavate beneath the Turkish fort and slums on Kom el-Dikka ("Mound of Rubble"), revealing a substratum of Roman remains beneath a Muslim cemetery. During Ptolemaic times this was the Park of Pan, a hilly pleasure-garden with a limestone summit carved into the shape of a pine cone, where Roman villas, baths and an amphitheatre were later built. The elegant Roman Theatre has marble seating for seven to eight hundred, cruder galleries for the plebs, and a forecourt with two patches of mosaic flooring. In Byzantine times, gladiatorial games were superseded by chariot races, with teams based on the Blues and Greens of Constantinople's hippodrome; some of the seats in the theatre bear graffiti supporting one of the teams (which were closely associated with political factions). Along the northern side of the theatre's portico are thirteen auditoria that might have been part of Alexandria's ancient university, with an annual enrolment of five thousand students.
A separate ticket, sold at the main entrance, entitles you to enter the Villa of Birds (£E5) – so called because of its mosaic floors, depicting nine different species of birds (and a panther). En route to the villa you'll pass a laboratory for cleaning antiques, with assorted masonry recently dredged from the seabed laid outside.