The only surviving wonder of the ancient world, on a plateau at the edge of the suburbs, with a hard sell attached.
The Great Pyramid was built for Khufu around 2560 BC, took perhaps twenty years, and stood 146.6 metres high — the tallest structure made by human beings for the next 3,800 years. It has lost its outer casing and about eight metres of height, and it is still the largest pyramid ever built.
Beside it are Khafre’s, which looks taller because it stands on higher ground and retains casing stones at the apex, and the much smaller Menkaure’s. Around them are queens’ pyramids, mastaba tombs, boat pits and the Sphinx.
They are not in the desert in the way photographs suggest. Giza is a city of several million people and the plateau is at the edge of it — from some angles you get the pyramids with a Pizza Hut in the foreground, which is worth knowing before you arrive expecting solitude.
Tickets
A general site ticket covers entry to the plateau and the outdoor area including the Sphinx.
Going inside the Great Pyramid costs considerably more and is a separate ticket, limited in number, sold at the gate. What you get is a steep 1.1-metre-high ascending passage, the Grand Gallery, and an empty granite chamber. There are no decorations, no treasure and no air conditioning, and it is hot, humid and airless.
Whether it is worth it depends entirely on whether standing inside the thing matters to you. Many people find the descent more memorable than the chamber. Anyone claustrophobic should not attempt it.
Khafre’s and Menkaure’s pyramids are cheaper to enter and much less crowded, and the interiors are broadly similar.
Also ticketed separately: the Solar Boat (the reconstructed cedar vessel found sealed beside the Great Pyramid, moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum) and some of the mastaba tombs.
The touts
This is the part nobody warns you about enough.
Around the entrance and inside the site you will be approached constantly — camel rides, horse rides, “guides”, scarabs, headscarves, photographs. Common lines: the site is closed today, this gate is for Egyptians only, the ticket office has moved, let me take your photo followed by a demand.
Everything you need is at the official ticket window. Say la shukran — no thank you — keep walking, and do not stop to explain. Agreeing to a camel photograph “for free” ends with a fee to get down.
None of it is dangerous. It is relentless, and it is the single most common reason visitors report a poor day here.
Timing
Open from early morning. Go at opening — the light is better, the temperature is survivable and the touts are fewer. By eleven in summer the plateau is brutal, with no shade at all.
The panorama point at the far south-western end of the site gives the classic view of all three together and is a long, hot walk or a short taxi within the plateau.
The sound and light show in the evening is dated and divisive, but the pyramids floodlit are worth seeing from a rooftop in Giza.
Getting there
Uber and Careem work well and are cheap; agree a return or book from the site. Metro Line 3 to Giza and a short taxi is the cheapest route. Allow 45 minutes to an hour from Downtown, more in traffic, which is most of the time.
More Landmarks
The Citadel of Saladin
Eight hundred years of fortification on a spur above the city, crowned by an Ottoman mosque that looks like it wandered in from Istanbul.
The Mosque of Ibn Tulun
The oldest mosque in Cairo surviving in its original form, from 879, with a spiral minaret and almost nobody in it.
Al-Azhar Mosque
Founded in 970, and the oldest continuously operating university in the world by most reckonings.