The southern valley of the Theban necropolis, where queens and royal children were buried — and where the finest painted tomb in Egypt is cut into the rock.
The Valley of the Queens sits at the southern end of the Luxor west bank, a short drive beyond Medinet Habu and well away from the coaches at the Valley of the Kings. Its ancient name was Ta-Set-Neferu.
Around ninety tombs have been found here. They were cut for the wives, sons and daughters of the New Kingdom pharaohs — not for kings — and a small rotating handful are open at any time.
One tomb is the reason most people come: QV66, cut for Nefertari, the principal wife of Ramesses II. Its painted decoration is the finest that survives from ancient Egypt — figures modelled in a way no other tomb attempts, colour that looks a few years old rather than three thousand, and a ceiling of gold stars on deep blue over every chamber. It was conserved over several years by the Getty Conservation Institute working with the Egyptian antiquities authority, and the result is genuinely unlike anything else you can walk into.
The queen's tomb is not the whole valley. The tombs of two of Ramesses III's sons, Amunherkhepshef and Khaemwaset, are usually open on the standard ticket and are worth the walk on their own — the reliefs show the boys being led by their father through the gods of the underworld, and the colour in them is strong.
It is also far quieter than the Valley of the Kings. The valley itself is small, bare and hot, and most tour groups skip it because Nefertari's supplement puts it outside a standard package.
Royal wives and children were buried in the Valley of the Kings until the 19th dynasty, when the burials were moved to this separate valley to the south. Most of the tombs here date from the 19th and 20th dynasties.
Nefertari was the first and most prominent of the wives of Ramesses II, and the smaller of the two temples at Abu Simbel was dedicated to her. Her tomb was found by Ernesto Schiaparelli's Italian expedition in 1904, already robbed in antiquity — the paintings, not the contents, are what survived.
The valley was reused in later periods, and a Coptic settlement occupied part of it. Salt crystallising behind the plaster is the long-term threat to the paintings, which is why access to QV66 has been opened, closed and re-opened repeatedly since the restoration finished.
Early morning, both for the heat and because the daily cap on Nefertari's tomb is easier to meet at opening. October to April is the comfortable season.
Opening hours: Daytime hours with seasonal variation. Nefertari's tomb may keep shorter hours than the valley itself.
Opening hours and ticket prices may change. Please confirm the latest details before visiting.
The village of the men who cut and painted the royal tombs — the most completely documented community to survive from the ancient world.
A sunrise flight over the west bank — temples, tombs, sugar cane fields and the Nile, from a few hundred metres up.
The mortuary temple of Ramesses III — the best-preserved painted colour of any large temple in Egypt, and almost always empty.
Two enormous seated statues standing in a field — all that is easily visible of what was once the largest temple in Egypt.
Three colonnaded terraces cut into a cliff wall at Deir el-Bahari — the mortuary temple of the woman who ruled Egypt as king.
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