Photo : ASaber91 — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Alexandria · Kom el-Dikka
Roman Theatre
Egypt's only surviving Roman theatre: thirteen tiers of marble in the middle of downtown.
The theatre surfaced in 1960, under the foundations of a government building that was about to go up, and a Polish mission has been digging the quarter ever since. Thirteen tiers of white marble in a half-circle, granite columns, mosaic floors: the building dates from the early centuries AD and later served as an assembly hall, and archaeologists read it as a small roofed odeon rather than a full theatre. Around it, the Kom el-Dikka site has uncovered a whole Roman quarter — baths, cisterns, and a row of lecture halls that make the place a rare teaching complex. It is small and hemmed in by tower blocks, and that sums Alexandria up: the ancient city lies under the modern one, and you see only what a building site happened to give back.
The extra bit
The Villa of the Birds, on the same site under its canopy, keeps its figured mosaics where they were laid; it sometimes needs a separate ticket. Ask at the window — nobody will offer.
Know before you go
In the afternoon the tiers throw the heat back at you, and the only shade on the site is the mosaic shelter's; an hour covers the round. You are right downtown, minutes from Misr station and Raml, and it is the easiest Alexandrian monument to reach on foot. You do not climb on the marble tiers, and the wardens will remind you.
