Travel: The city that fell into the sea

The Observer ( Dan Whitaker)

Dated 29th July 2007, this is another one that got away - thanks to my father for sending it to me.

More than a million Britons 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.

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