The Ramesseum, Luxor

The Ramesseum is the mortuary temple of Ramesses II, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. After the king was buried in the Valley of the Kings it served his funerary cult for almost a century. One source places his reign in the 13th century BC, from 1279 to 1213 BC, and says he spent twenty of his sixty-seven years on the throne building it.

It is a ruin, and a quieter stop than the big west-bank sites, but it has one of the most photographed fragments of the pharaonic world: the remains of a monolithic granite colossus of the king that stood in the first court and is described as originally about 18 metres tall.

The broken colossus tells the story of the site better than any plaque. It is now a heap of enormous fragments, and standing next to them gives a sense of scale that restored monuments do not.

The temple facade retains rows of Osiride statues, figures of the king in the pose of the god Osiris, in front of tall square pillars.

It is far less crowded than the Valley of the Kings or Hatshepsut's temple, which makes it a pleasant place to slow down on a west-bank day.

Ramesses II built the temple as a place where his cult would be kept up after his death, in the same way as the other mortuary temples of the Theban west bank.

The first court held the great seated colossus, which was monolithic, made of a single block of granite. It is now fragmentary, and the sources we found do not agree on any figure for its weight, so none is given here.

One travel account links the site to Shelley's poem about Ozymandias, which draws on the Greek form of part of the king's throne name, Usermaatre. Treat that as a literary connection, not a documented one.

• The shattered granite colossus of Ramesses II
• Osiride statues of the king in front of square pillars
• Carved wall scenes on the pylon
• A quiet site on the Theban west bank