Marsa Alam travel guide

Top 6 sights in Marsa Alam

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1

   Marsa Alam

   A town on the southern Red Sea coast that had a few hundred people and a fishing jetty until the airport opened in 2001. The reefs off it — Elphinstone for hammerheads, Samadai for spinner dolphins — are the reason divers come this far south.

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2. 

   2

   Port Ghalib

   A resort town and marina built from nothing on the Red Sea beside the airport at Marsa Alam, laid out in the 2000s around a deep natural bay. Hotels, a promenade of shops and a harbour for dive boats and yachts now fill what was empty desert coast.

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3. 

   3

   Sikait

   The main settlement of Mons Smaragdus, the only emerald source known to the Roman world, worked from Ptolemaic times into the sixth century. Miners' houses, rock-cut temples and shafts driven into the schist survive along the valley.

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4. 

   4

   Mons Smaragdus

   The emerald mines of the eastern desert, worked from Ptolemaic times and the only source of emerald in the Roman empire. Ruined miners' villages, temples and shafts remain, twenty-four kilometres in from the Red Sea coast.

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5. 

   5

   Wadi Nugrus

   A valley in the emerald country of Mons Smaragdus where Roman and Byzantine miners cut beryl from the rock. Ruined settlements and workings lie along it, part of the network that supplied the empire with its only emeralds.

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6. 

   6

   Hangaliya Mine

   A gold working in the Eastern Desert inland from Marsa Alam, in country the Egyptians and later the Romans mined for the same metal. Modern prospecting returned to these hills in the 20th century, and the old shafts lie among the newer workings.

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