The old pink museum on Tahrir Square, crowded, under-labelled, and still one of the great collections on earth.
Opened in 1902, designed by the French architect Marcel Dourgnon in a neoclassical style and painted a distinctive dusty pink, this was the world’s first purpose-built archaeological museum and it held the Egyptian national collection for over a century.
It is famously overcrowded, under-labelled and hot, with cases from the 1930s, handwritten cards, and objects of world importance stacked three deep. For many visitors that is precisely its charm — it feels like a Victorian storehouse rather than a museum, and the sheer density of extraordinary things is overwhelming in a way modern display never manages.
What is still here
The collections have been redistributed to the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat, and the process has run in stages. The royal mummies moved to the NMEC in April 2021, in the televised Pharaohs’ Golden Parade. The Tutankhamun material has gone to the GEM.
What remains, and it is a great deal, includes the Old and Middle Kingdom sculpture — the Narmer Palette, one of the founding documents of Egyptian history; the seated Khafre in diorite; Rahotep and Nofret with their inlaid quartz eyes; the Meidum geese; the Amarna material including the colossi of Akhenaten; and the Fayum mummy portraits.
Because the transfers have been phased, check what is currently displayed if there is something specific you want to see.
The building and the square
The museum stands on the north side of Tahrir Square, the centre of the 2011 revolution. During the protests a human chain of demonstrators formed around it to prevent looting; some objects were nonetheless taken and most were recovered.
Bullet marks and repairs from that period are still visible on buildings around the square.
Practicalities
Tickets at the gate or online; separate charges for the mummy rooms where applicable and for photography.
Allow three hours minimum. There is no air conditioning to speak of in much of it, which matters from May onwards.
The metro stops directly beneath the square, which makes this the most easily reached major site in Cairo.
Which museum to choose
If you have one day: the GEM, for Tutankhamun and the scale.
If you have two: add this one, for the older material and the atmosphere.
If you have three: the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat, for the mummies and for a chronological account that runs past the pharaohs into Coptic, Islamic and modern Egypt — which is the story the other two do not tell.
More Museums
The Grand Egyptian Museum
Two decades late, a kilometre from the pyramids, and holding the complete Tutankhamun collection for the first time.
National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation
The royal mummies in a darkened underground hall, and the only museum here that treats Egypt as continuous rather than ancient.
Museum of Islamic Art
One of the finest collections of Islamic art anywhere, rebuilt after a car bomb destroyed the front of it in 2014.