Egypt: The city that fell into the sea

Hidden treasures wait to be found on the seabed. Photo / Reuters

Millions of tourists journeyed to Egypt last year. Almost all of them either battled the regimented coach parties to glimpse ancient Pharaonic monuments or flocked to the beach resorts that offer world-class diving and windsurfing, and which sadly are also devastating the ecology of the Red Sea coast. But there are many other Egypts.

One of the country's neglected places is Alexandria, immodestly named by its founder, Alexander the Great. This Mediterranean port is also famous as the home of Queen Cleopatra, from the days when it vied with Rome as the world's greatest city, trading every ancient commodity and boasting 700,000 scrolls in its library.

A second era of celebrity came in the century up until the 1950s, when Alexandria's commercial prowess came again to the fore, allowing a cosmopolitan hedonism captured in the novels of Lawrence Durrell and others.

Now the foreigners are gone (though its 30km of beachfront draws Egyptians in the summer) and it has something of the taste of old Havana.

Once-imperious early 20th-century buildings stand in glorious dilapidation along the waterfront corniche and twisting backstreets.

Overstaffed, high-ceilinged coffee houses like the Trianon regret the passing of the Armenian cotton traders, Greek shipping agents and European aristocrats who were once their patrons. Any visitor wanting to revel in Alexandria's decayed grandeur should stay (or on a tighter budget, take mint tea) at the Windsor Palace or the Cecil, both on the corniche. These offer ornate caged lifts, decor that celebrates a lost colonial world and bright views of the blue-green sea, to a contemporary soundtrack of traffic and calls to prayer.

Alexandria has few true monuments. It bears little resemblance to the white marble city where first Julius Caesar, then Mark Anthony lusted after their hostess. There are Greek and Roman remnants, some evocative catacombs, and mosques that are nothing compared with Cairo's.

The building most likely to quicken the pulse is only five years old: the US$220 million (NZ$ 310 million) library, a disc sliding down to the seafront, designed by Norwegian architects Snohetta.

But, under the sea, it's another story. Just in front of the corniche, less than 20 metres under the surface of the Mediterranean, lie the ruins of the ancient royal city: the lighthouse that was one of the world's Seven Wonders and the palace where Anthony and Cleopatra lived out their last days.

These were subsumed by earthquake and subsidence 1600 years ago, then catalogued by divers from the 1960s onwards.

Dr Ashraf Sabry owns Alexandra Dive, the only operator permitted to take tourists diving here. "My background helped," admits the native Alexandrian and son of a submarine commander. "We all knew it was here, where we spear-fished. Of course, the French did their usual thing and demanded it be called a discovery."