Luxor

Luxor is, alongside Giza and Cairo, one of the great rendezvous of any Egyptian journey — and probably the most enchanting. Built on the site of ancient Thebes, capital of the New Kingdom for five centuries (around 1550-1077 BC), the modern city holds on its two Nile banks the densest concentration of pharaonic monuments on the planet. Herodotus already called it in the fifth century BC 'the city of a hundred gates'; twenty-five centuries later, the wonder remains intact.

On the east bank (city of the living for the ancient Egyptians), two colossal temples rise: the Temple of Karnak, the largest religious temple ever built (123 hectares, equivalent to more than 80 Notre-Dame of Paris cathedrals), whose hypostyle hall with 134 papyrus-shaped columns 23 metres high leaves visitors literally speechless; and the Temple of Luxor, more modest but of rare elegance, linked to Karnak by a 2.7 km avenue lined with 700 ram-headed sphinxes (fully restored and reopened in 2021). On the west bank (city of the dead), the Valleys of the Kings and Queens shelter the tombs of New Kingdom pharaohs and queens — including that of Tutankhamun, discovered intact by Howard Carter in 1922, which revealed to the world the unsuspected richness of Egyptian funerary art. The Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, carved into the cliff and forming a monumental three-terrace staircase, is one of the most striking architectural works of antiquity. Luxor is lived slowly, over 3-4 days, ideally combined with a Nile cruise to Aswan.