Snubbed by Egypt’s elite, can Alexandria's past glories help improve its present fortunes?

A renovated museum, reopening after two decades, seeks to showcase the rich heritage of the port founded by Alexander The Great

Crowds flock to the beach at Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria. Hamza Hendawi / The National

Less than a century ago, Alexandria was the summer playground for Egypt's rich and powerful. There to escape Cairo's stifling heat, they led luxury-filled lives of relaxation and partying.

The ancient port city on the Mediterranean also hosted a vibrant community of Europeans, most of whom had come to Egypt for better economic opportunities, operating small and medium-sized businesses like hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars. Some had fled persecution or political upheavals in their home countries.

The vibe of those days is documented in blockbuster Egyptian films of the 1940s and 1950s and by Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet, a four-volume novel that offers a window into the dynamics of the city's high society around the mid-20th century.

Fast forward to the present day and Egypt's elites now flock to the gated communities that have sprung up to the west of the city to spend their summer, while its tens of thousands of expatriate residents have vanished, after a wave of nationalisations and xenophobia fanned by authorities in the 1950s and 1960s.

Even the current government has abandoned Alexandria, instead moving its summer seat to the newly built and mostly uninhabited metropolis of New Alamein, some 100km to the west.

Alexandria now is essentially an overcrowded city of eight million that, apart from its seaside location, resembles almost any other in this country of 106 million people. On the outskirts are densely populated shanty towns where the hundreds of thousands of migrants from rural Egypt have settled over the years. Many of its architecturally unique villas have been demolished and replaced by high-rise residential towers.

Along the corniche, its waterfront promenade, the pavements are dirty and filled with litter and noisy food vendors. The cafes serve poor-quality fare and the high-rises lining the seafront show tell-tale signs of shoddy plumbing.

The city, which has a sizeable Christian community, has over the years become a bastion of hardline Islamists. A little more than a decade ago, they vociferously opposed the instalment of a statue of Alexander The Great, the founder of the city, on the grounds that his ancient Greek warrior attire was inappropriate because it showed his thighs.

In many ways, the city's present state is in keeping with its roller-coaster history of veering between prominence and decline.

There was the glory and pomp of the Ptolemaic and Roman ages – lasting almost 700 years, from about 300BC to 395 – during which time Alexandria was the nation's capital.

During the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled between 284BC and 246BC, the Pharos of Alexandria lighthouse was built. Estimated to have been at least 100m high, it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and for centuries one of the world's tallest human-made structures.

Later, Alexandria fell into decline, following the seventh century Muslim conquest and the building of a new capital, Al Fustat, on part of what is now Cairo.

The rise of Rosetta, 65km to the east, as the nation's main port in the 16th century led to a further sidelining of Alexandria; when Napoleon Bonaparte and his army landed there in the summer of 1798, they found a small, rundown town of about 4,000 people.

But attempts to explain its current malaise draws a diversity of opinion from residents, who offer reasons ranging from unchecked migration from rural provinces to poor government planning and corruption – though some also question whether its more recent past has been idealised over the years.

“We are often superficial and only scratch the surface when we try to describe the city,” laments May El Tabbakh, an architect and a conservationist from Alexandria who challenges cliches that romanticise the city's past.

“So, the city was once clean and had a community of white Europeans. But what was Egypt's part in that? As for the expatriates, they were mostly either persecuted in their home countries or so poor so they came to Alexandria and took advantage of the sweet opportunities available here,” she says.

Ms El Tabbakh sees diminishing economic opportunities and neglect as key factors in Alexandria's decline.

“There are eight million of us and we live on a piece of land that was home to only 700,000 not so long ago,” she says. “There is very little left in the city that links it to its Greco-Roman past. Heritage sites are collapsing because no one is prepared to spend money to restore them.”

Unlike Ms El Tabbakh, some believe the problem is the people who have come here from poor rural communities in the Nile Delta and southern Egypt, in search for better opportunities.

Even though these migrants have struck deep roots in the city over the past half century, some native Alexandrians resent their presence, accusing them of bringing conservative values to a city that often prided itself on its social sophistication, a measure of secularism and uniqueness among Egyptian cities.

Those same Alexandrians also dismiss as crude intruders the hundreds of thousands of visitors from Nile Delta regions who crowd the city's beaches in the summer, which Ms El Tabbakh takes issue with.

“They have every right to enjoy the sun and the fresh air of the city when prime locations on the country's Mediterranean and Red Sea coastlines are being transformed into upscale compounds that cater for wealthy Egyptians,” she said.

For Nadim Anawaty, a fourth-generation member of an Alexandria family with roots in southern Europe and the Levant, the city's character has changed to the point where he no longer wants to live there.

“I was happy to stay put and not leave 10 years ago. But lately, I feel that I should go,” he says.

Mr Anawaty, 35, reminisces about a time when he says foreign residents added a European flavour to the city that set it apart from other Egyptian metropolises.

“There was a time, my parents and grandparents told me, when a Greek man sold clams to people relaxing on the beach and an Italian later came by to sell them ice cream,” he says.

A look at one of the more popular beaches in Alexandria – curiously, called Miami – showcases the stark contrast between the Alexandria of, say, 50 years ago and now.

Until the 1960s or a little after, Miami was patronised by well-off and trendy Cairenes. Now it has become a scene of chaos, with food leftovers and paper wrappings littering the golden sands. Plastic bottles and drinks cans float around bathers close to the shore. The seawater turns from pristine blue in the early morning to a murky brown by late afternoon.

Street hawkers selling anything from contraband sunglasses and T-shirts to NBA jerseys and handbags fill pavements along the seaside, screaming for the attention of passers-by.

The transformation of Alexandria from a high-end destination to a magnet for the middle and working class of the Nile Delta has coincided with the drop in arrivals of the Mediterranean cruise ships that used to regularly bring tourists who filled its museums and historical sites.

Tour operators complain that most foreign tourists who visit the city now tend not to spend the night there. Those who arrive by coach from Cairo in the mornings head back before sunset, while those who disembark from cruise liners prefer to rush to Cairo to see the Giza pyramids and the Egyptian Museum, rather than visit the sights in Alexandria.

“Over the years, Alexandrians have grown unaccustomed to dealing with tourists. They've become aggressive and take unfair advantage of them,” says Mona Halim, a veteran tour operator.

“There are also very few hotels that meet the standards required to house tourists and the traffic is a nightmare. It's a pity because Alexandria has so many fascinating antiquity sites,” she said.

But while the city is mired in the mundane in its present state, a reminder of its past glory has just resurfaced, albeit quietly, suggesting that it's unlikely to be game-changer for the city's tourism industry.

Closed for two decades for restoration, the city's renowned Greco-Roman Museum opened its doors again earlier this year with a sophisticated lighting system that adds to the attraction of the displayed artefacts dating back to the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, as well as the early years of Christianity in Egypt.

The subtle lighting and the black walls of some wings highlight the art and intricacy of the artefacts, which include majestic marble statues of Ptolemaic monarchs and Roman emperors as well as some of ancient Greece's mythological gods.

The museum is a compelling testament to the city's glorious past, but on a recent weekday the visitors – a mix of foreign tourists and locals – were easily outnumbered by security guards. The shelves of the gift shop, which was closed, were filled with the same crude, cheap replicas of well-known Egyptian artefacts found in Cairo's souvenir shops.