The Roman theatre and lecture halls of ancient Alexandria, in the middle of the modern city, found by accident during building work and excavated mainly by Polish teams.
Kom el-Dikka is an archaeological site in the middle of modern Alexandria. Its best-known feature is a Roman theatre, usually described as an odeon, with curved rows of stone seating, set among the busy streets of the city.
The site was discovered during modern building work and excavated mainly by Polish archaeologists in the 1960s. The visible remains date mostly from the 2nd to the 6th centuries AD.
It is the clearest place in Alexandria to see the city as a Roman and late-antique centre. Most visitors come for the Mediterranean, the library and the citadel, and Kom el-Dikka adds something older.
It is more than a theatre. The site includes a large complex of lecture halls, or auditoria, along the west and north sides, with one source counting more than twenty, which points to a major teaching centre in late antiquity.
It also has the Villa of the Birds, a Roman house known for a mosaic floor in the main room that shows pigeons, peacocks, quails and parrots.
The theatre is dated by one source to the 2nd century AD and was remodelled later, then destroyed by an earthquake, probably in the 6th or 7th century.
The Villa of the Birds is dated by one source to the reign of Hadrian. The sources we found do not give a firm date for the mosaics, so we do not give one here.
In late antiquity the area became a cultural and educational complex, with the lecture halls forming a large part of it.
Morning or late afternoon, when the stone is cooler. There is little shade on site.
Opening hours: Daily 09:00 to 17:00, last entry 16:00 (15:00 in Ramadan). Ministry portals, checked 13 August 2026. Hours change, so confirm before you go.
Opening hours and ticket prices may change. Please confirm the latest details before visiting.
Alexandria's museum of the city's long history, in a palace on Tariq al-Horreya Street, opened in 2003 with about 1,800 pieces from the Pharaonic to the Islamic periods.
A single column of Aswan granite on a hill of rubble — the last thing standing of the Serapeum, and nothing whatever to do with Pompey.
A Roman tomb cut three levels into the rock under Alexandria, where Egyptian, Greek and Roman art collide in a single room.
A fifteenth-century fort built on the foundations — and partly out of the stones — of the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
A modern library on the Alexandria waterfront, built as a deliberate answer to the ancient one that was lost.
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