Cairo is the largest city in Africa and the Arab world – more than twenty million people along both banks of the Nile, with the Pyramids of Giza standing where the streets stop and the desert starts. Most people arrive expecting one monument and find a whole civilization stacked in layers: Pharaonic on the Giza plateau, Roman and early-Christian in Coptic Cairo, and a thousand years of mosques, gates and bazaars in the medieval core around Khan el-Khalili.
The headline changed recently. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), on the plateau within sight of the Pyramids, is now the largest archaeological museum in the world, and it holds the complete Tutankhamun collection together for the first time – more than 5,000 objects from a single tomb. Between the GEM, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, the Giza plateau alone earns two full days.
Cairo is also the hinge of the country. Memphis, Saqqara and the Step Pyramid sit half an hour south; Alexandria is two hours north by fast train; and the domestic terminal puts Luxor and Aswan about seventy minutes away. Nearly every Egypt itinerary opens here and uses the city as the spring the rest of the trip uncoils from.