Destination Cairo with eyes on the new Egyptian museum

After years of waiting, the date for the official opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (Gem) in Giza has been announced: 3 July next. Actually, the new Egyptian Museum in Cairo has already been partly open to the public since last October, with a collection of exhibits that takes more than a day to see. But the project is much more ambitious: with its 81,000 square metres and more than 100,000 exhibits (including the 5500 of Tutankhamen's treasure), it will be the largest archaeological museum in the world.

The pharaonic (it has to be said) structure designed by Heneghan Peng is inspired by the nearby pyramids and houses the statues of Egyptian kings, such as the colossus of Ramses II at the entrance, 80 tonnes in weight, 12 metres high and 3200 years old. "Thanks to the GEM, we can give some breathing space to the old Egyptian Museum (Emc) in El-Tahrir Square, which is currently crammed with artefacts and visitors,' says Amr E-Khadi, CEO of the Egyptian Tourism Authority. 'It will also be an opportunity to renovate it, giving more space to masterpieces such as the Fayum portraits, a gallery of some 600 paintings on wood that were used to cover the faces of mummies in Roman times. The Gem also gives a major boost to the Vision 2030 project that will transform the Giza plain, a Unesco heritage site since 1979, into a huge open-air museum. Innovation is already underway, with the contemporary festival Art d'Egypte and the restaurant Khufu's, where hummus, babaghanoush and kebabs compete between tradition and haute gastronomy. Cuisine, design, service and the breathtaking view of the pyramids have earned it third place in the list of the 50 Best Restaurants in the Middle East and North Africa. Those pyramids have been part of our imagination since childhood. When you stand in front of Cheops, the tallest at 138.8 metres and the oldest of the seven wonders of the world, it is a dream come true with all its legitimate questions: how did they build them? Were they really just burial sites? There are hypotheses, but no certain theories.

Ancient Egyptian civilisation has a calamitous power that is never fully revealed, not even after visiting the Emc and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, where the mummies of 20 pharaohs are displayed in an environment that reproduces the darkness and temperature of the tombs from which they came. Cairo teems, day and night, with its almost 22 million inhabitants. The megalopolis is shrouded in a constant haze, a consequence of pollution, the worst in Africa, fourth in the world. The centre is dirty, chaotic, busy and noisy. And the social discrepancies between its decaying houses and New Cairo compounds with swimming pools and golf courses are obvious. Yet the city exerts a fatal, irresistible attraction. You see it and love it, because it has a distinct authenticity, albeit immense, sprawling and elusive. You just have to surrender to its flow and everything works, even crossing the street unharmed amidst the flood of cars. Despite the confusion everything flows, indeed progresses. The Financial Times devoted a page to the rebirth of Downtown, the Belle Époque area where the Emc and the new Mazeej Balad hotel are also located. And Zamalek is an ideal district to stay in: full of life, surrounded by the Nile, amidst embassies, typical restaurants like Abou El Sid, local designer shops like Madu, and street food like Zooba, also in the 50 Best Restaurants, which now exports falafel and koshary abroad. Among the tree-lined avenues, in the evening it is a bustle of young people with smartphones and trainers, chatting in front of shop windows where women's clothes are offered without too much veil. Many flats have become bohemian and affordable Airbnb, charming little hotels like Numéro Cinq open, in a Belle Époque villa among mango and lemon trees. This is the city modernising, and its buzz is only a three-hour flight from Italy.