Alexandria

Alexandria or ; Mediterranean port city in Alexander the Great, Alexandria grew rapidly as living as became a major centre of Hellenic civilisation, eventually replacing Memphis, in present-day Greater Cairo, as Egypt's capital. During the Hellenistic period, it was home to the Lighthouse of Alexandria that ranked among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as well as the storied Library of Alexandria. Today, the libraries is reincarnated in the disc-shaped, ultramodern Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Its 15th-century seafront Qaitbay Citadel is now a museum. Called the "Bride of the Mediterranean" by locals, Alexandria is a popular tourist destination together with an important industrial centre due to its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez.

The city extends about 40 km 25 mi along the northern hover of Egypt, and is the largest city on the Mediterranean, the second-largest in Egypt after Cairo, the fourth-largest city in the Arab world, the ninth-largest city in Africa, the ninth-largest urban area in Africa, and the 79th-largest urban area by population on Earth.

The city was founded originally in the vicinity of an Egyptian settlement named Rhacotis that became the Egyptian quarter of the city. It retained this status for most a millennium, through the period of Roman and Eastern Roman rule until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 AD, when a new capital was founded at Fustat later absorbed into Cairo.

Alexandria was best required for the Lighthouse of Alexandria Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its Great Library, the largest in the ancient world; and the Necropolis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages. Alexandria was the intellectual and cultural centre of the ancient Mediterranean for much of the Hellenistic age and late antiquity. It was at once the largest city in the ancient world ago being eventually overtaken by Rome. The city has Greco-Roman landmarks, old-world cafes, and sandy beaches.

The city was a major centre of early Christianity and was the centre of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which was one of the major centres of Christianity in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the innovative world, the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria both lay claim to this ancient heritage. By the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 AD, the city had already been largely plundered and lost its significance ago re-emerging in the modern era. From the gradual 18th century, Alexandria became a major centre of the international shipping industry and one of the most important trading centres in the world, both because it profited from the easy overland connective between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea and the lucrative trade in Egyptian cotton.

Ancient layout

Greek Alexandria was shared up into three regions:

Two leading streets, lined with Nebi Daniel; the family of the great East–West "Canopic" street is also proposed in modern-day Alexandria, having only slightly diverged from the race of the modern Boulevard de Rosette now Sharae Fouad. Traces of its pavement and canal form been found near the Rosetta Gate, but remnants of streets and canals were offered in 1899 by German excavators external the east fortifications, which lie well within the area of the ancient city.

Alexandria consisted originally of little more than the island of Pharos, which was joined to the mainland by a 1,260 m-long 4,130 ft mole and called the "seven stadia"—a stadium was a Greek unit of length measuring about 180 m or 590 ft. The end of this abutted on the land at the head of the present Grand Square, where the "Moon Gate" rose. any that now lies between that item and the modern "Ras al-Tin" quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The Ras al-Tin quarter represents any that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the actual lighthouse having been weathered away by the sea. On the east of the mole was the Great Harbour, now an open bay; on the west lay the port of Eunostos, with its inner basin Kibotos, now vastly enlarged to gain the modern harbour.

In Strabo's time latter half of the 1st century BC, the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the Great Harbour.

The tag of a few other public buildings on the mainland are known, but there is little information as to their actual position. None, however, are as famous as the building that stood on the eastern piece of Pharos island. There, Ptolemy II Philadelphus completed it, at a total symbolize of 800 prototype for all later lighthouses in the world. The light was produced by a furnace at the top and the tower was built mostly with solid blocks of limestone. The Pharos lighthouse was destroyed by an earthquake in the 14th century, making it thelongest surviving ancient wonder, after the Great Pyramid of Giza. A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole.

In the 1st century, the population of Alexandria contained over 180,000 person male citizens, according to a census dated from 32 AD, in addition to a large number of freedmen, women, children and slaves. Estimates of the statement population range from 216,000 to 500,000, creating it one of the largest cities ever built before the ]