Alexandria Walking Tour: Old Streets, Markets, and Corniche

Your driver drops you at Raml Station, the heart of downtown Alexandria and the terminus of the city's tram network. Trams have run in Alexandria since the 1860s, and the line to Raml is among the oldest in Africa. The blue-and-cream trams, some of them double-deckers, have been out of service since early 2026 while the line is rebuilt.

Your guide explains how the tram shaped the city, linking the downtown to the seaside suburbs to the east, and how the square became the meeting place of Alexandria's mixed communities.

Your guide shows you the station and the route of the line, and explains the plans to rebuild it.

A few steps away, Saad Zaghloul Square opens onto the Corniche and the sea. At its center stands the statue of Saad Zaghloul, who led the Egyptian independence movement after the 1919 revolution.

On the seafront corner is the Cecil Hotel, which opened around 1930. It became one of the city's most famous addresses, with writers, royalty, and wartime visitors among the guests in its stories, and it belongs to the world that Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet made famous.

Around the square are the old cafés and patisseries, with their wooden counters and mirrored walls, where Greek, Italian, and Egyptian families once gathered. Your guide points out the details of the buildings and the stories behind them.

From the square you walk to Fouad Street, one of the oldest streets in Alexandria. It roughly follows the line of the ancient Canopic Way, the grand avenue that crossed the Greek city from east to west, and it is lined with elegant buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The highlight is the Sayed Darwish Theatre, the city's opera house, which opened in the 1920s as the Muhammad Ali Theatre; the old name can still be seen on its facade. It was later renamed after Sayed Darwish, the Alexandrian composer often called the father of modern Egyptian popular music.

Your guide also points out the old consulates, churches, and apartment blocks along the street, and where the ancient city is thought to have lain beneath your feet.

Nearby, on a quiet side street, is the apartment where the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy lived for the last decades of his life. Cavafy, who was born in Alexandria in 1863 and died here in 1933, is one of the most important poets of the 20th century, and his poems, such as The City and Ithaka, are read around the world.

The apartment is now a small museum, with his furniture, books, manuscripts, and photographs, and the atmosphere of a home rather than a gallery. Your guide tells his story and reads a few lines, explaining why he remains so closely linked to the city.

The museum keeps its own opening hours and charges a small entry fee, which is not included unless your quote says so.

From the Cavafy Museum you walk into Attarin, a maze of narrow lanes named after the spice and perfume sellers who once traded here. Today it is best known for its antique dealers, whose crowded shops are full of furniture, chandeliers, mirrors, clocks, and objects left behind by the European families who once lived in the city.

Your guide takes you to a few of the shops and tells the stories of the treasures that have passed through them. Browsing is welcome, and if you want to buy something, your guide can help with bargaining and with arranging shipping.

Nearby is the Attarin Mosque, one of the old mosques of the city, and the lanes around it are lined with small workshops and cafés.

The walk continues to Manshiyya Square, officially Tahrir Square, once the commercial and administrative center of the European city. It is dominated by the equestrian statue of Muhammad Ali, the founder of modern Egypt, who rebuilt Alexandria as a port and made it the country's gateway to Europe in the 19th century.

Around the square stand old courts, banks, and shops, and the streets around it carry French, Italian, and Greek names. Your guide explains how the square was the scene of key moments in modern Egyptian history.

From here you can feel how close the old commercial city is to the sea, which is just a few blocks away.

The walk ends on the Corniche, the seafront road that curves around the Eastern Harbor. Here you see the long rows of early 20th-century buildings that face the sea, with their balconies and decorated facades, and the fishermen casting from the sea wall.

Your guide points out the view toward Qaitbay Citadel at the far end of the harbor, on the site of the ancient Pharos lighthouse, and explains how the ancient royal quarter lay along this shore, now partly under the water.

Your driver meets you on the Corniche and takes you back to your hotel. If you want to stay on for a seafood dinner nearby, tell your guide and you can be dropped at a restaurant instead.