The Grand Egyptian Museum

The Grand Egyptian Museum stands about two kilometres from the pyramids, on the desert side of the Cairo–Alexandria road. It was built specifically to hold collections the old museum in Tahrir Square had outgrown, and it is on an entirely different scale — the building itself is one of the largest archaeological museums anywhere.

The headline is the Tutankhamun material. For the first time the whole of the tomb assemblage is displayed together, rather than the selection that used to be shown in Tahrir.

The Tutankhamun galleries are the reason most people come, and they justify the trip. Howard Carter's tomb clearance produced thousands of objects, and seeing them as one group — furniture, chariots, weapons, sandals, gaming boards, the shrines that nested around the coffins — turns a famous gold mask into a real household.

The second thing is the grand staircase. Colossal royal statues are set along a rising flight of steps with a window at the top looking out at the pyramids themselves. It is a piece of museum design that does something a label cannot: it puts the statues and the tombs of the same kings in one line of sight.

Third, it is next door to Giza. The plateau and the museum can be done as one day rather than two, which is a real saving on a short trip.

The project was conceived to solve a problem the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir could not: a building from 1902 holding a collection that had grown far past it, with most of it in storage and much of it displayed in conditions no modern museum would accept.

The design came from an open international competition in 2003, won by the Dublin practice heneghan peng architects. Japanese government loans covered much of the build, and the on-site conservation centre treated the Tutankhamun objects Carter cleared between 1922 and 1932 years before any gallery opened.

Construction ran for well over a decade, with the opening pushed back repeatedly. Objects were moved out to the new site in stages — the most publicised being the transfer of Khufu's cedar solar boat, moved whole and overnight across Giza in a purpose-built vehicle from the museum that had been built over its pit.

The colossus of Ramesses II in the atrium had an even longer journey. Excavated at Mit Rahina, the site of ancient Memphis, in 1820, it stood outside Cairo's main railway station from 1955, was moved out to Giza in 2006 and lifted into place indoors in 2018. Twelve galleries took trial visitors from October 2024, ahead of the full opening in November 2025.

The old museum in Tahrir has not closed. It keeps a substantial collection and remains worth visiting; the two are complementary rather than replacements for each other.

• The Tutankhamun tomb collection, shown together in one place for the first time — the king's own mummy stays in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings
• The grand staircase of colossal royal statues, rising towards a window onto the pyramids
• The colossus of Ramesses II in the atrium
• Khufu's cedar solar boat, moved here from the museum built over its pit beside the Great Pyramid
• The view of the Giza plateau from the upper levels of the building
• The hanging obelisk of Ramesses II outside, raised so you can look up at the carving on its base
• Tutankhamun's six chariots, taken apart to get them into the tomb and shown together here