In the battle between the developers and the conservationists for the future of Egypt’s Mediterranean city, Alexandria, the cultural lobby may finally be making headway. Andrew Humphreys reports
When newly married Wafik Doss moved into his elegant apartment in Alexandria it overlooked the gardens of Italianate villas on three sides and the Mediterranean on the fourth.
When one villa was demolished and a mosque built in its place, it was a nuisance: the loudspeaker attached to the minaret awoke Doss – a Christian – with the dawn call to prayer. Then another villa disappeared to be replaced by a mid-rise concrete apartment block, and then another, both of which at different times of the day smothered Doss’ home in deep shadow.
Finally, an apartment block went up between him and the sea. Instead of being able to sit on his balcony and look out at a distant blue horizon, Doss was faced by the ranked kitchens of fast-food eateries from which the smell of hot fat leaked into the air. The only sunlight that now came into the apartment was from the side on which the relatively low-rise mosque stood. Thank heaven for small mercies, says Doss.
This is only one man’s tale of bad luck. But it is a common tale and one to which almost every Alexandrian can add his or her own twist. (Ask my mother-in-law who five years ago bought a flat with rooftop views and now looks out at the canyon-like walls of an apartment block that has suddenly sprouted just metres in front of her living room windows.)
Alexandria is a city that has always had something of a cavalier attitude to its heritage. As the one-time pre-eminent centre of culture and learning of the classical world, it was home to the Mouseion (which housed the Library of Alexandria), and the Pharos, a relative skyscraper of a lighthouse counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a city bejewelled with the palaces of its Ptolemaic rulers, the last of which was Cleopatra, and with the tomb of city founder Alexander the Great. All of this is gone; lost. Orgies of destruction by early Christians, cataclysmic earthquakes and tsunamis are usually appointed the brunt of the blame. The ruins that were left just got buried under subsequent centuries of building. Two Ancient Egyptian obelisks that survived into modern times were given away as gifts by the 19th-century ruler and keen moderniser, Ismail Pasha (one stands beside the Thames in London, the other in Central Park, New York).
The situation has not improved with time. Since the early 1990s, French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur has been working in the city conducting what is called salvage archaeology: when a site is discovered by accident (a road digger unearths a Graeco-Roman catacomb – it happens) or a building is torn down to be replaced by something taller, bigger and more profitable, the archaeologists are given a brief window of opportunity to record their findings before the concrete is poured. If they are lucky. Empereur once told me how he had watched from his inner-city balcony as gangs of labourers were trucked onto a construction site under cover of darkness to clear it of columns and other ancient relics before anybody noticed and could call a halt to the building work.
Empereur shares his frustrations with Dr Mohammed Awad, a practising, third-generation architect, historian and director of the Alexandria & Mediterranean Research Centre. Awad has long been a passionate advocate for the preservation and conservation of the city’s physical heritage. His campaigning has earned him respect and enmity in about equal measure. He used to take a video camera out at night to film illegal demolitions, like the one witnessed by Empereur.
Yet his most controversial action was to promote the idea of erecting an equestrian statue of the city’s founder, Alexander the Great. Designed in Greece and presented as a gift by various Greek associations in 2000, the monument enraged many Egyptians who – only 2,331 years on from the event – still viewed the Macedonian as an imperialist conqueror.
Another of Awad’s notable campaigns was in the mid-1990s when he took a stand against the bulldozing of the site where the city’s new library was to be built without prior archaeological excavation work. The library was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, intended to revive the spirit of the lost Alexandrian library of classical times. Completed in 2002, it is a giant 160-metre-diameter glazed disc that emerges out of layers of history and tilts its face to the Mediterranean. Its solid granite drum is inscribed with characters from every known alphabet, some 120 scripts, while the great amphitheatre of the reading room sits 2,000 readers.
Although opposed to the haste with which developers were keen to launch into the initial construction, Awad is very much a supporter of the finished product. ‘Before the library, Alexandria had a lack of culture but the library has brought the world to the city,’ he adds.
Last October the Bibliotheca celebrated placing its 555,555th book on the shelves (Euclid’s Elements, appropriately enough a product of the original Library of Alexandria) but it is about far more than books. The library is only the second in the world to hold a full copy of the Internet Archive, which is a snapshot of every page hosted on the web between 1996 and 2006, or 1.5 petabytes (that is 1 followed by 15 zeroes) of data stored on 880 computers. This July it was host to Wikimania 2008, the annual conference for people involved in web-based Wikimedia projects. All of which demonstrates the Bibliotheca is an incredibly forward-thinking institution.
The hope is that the library can act as a catalyst for nothing less than an intellectual and cultural rebirth of the city. That may already be on its way. At the heart of Alexandria is the Eastern Harbour, which is looped around by a couple of kilometres of seafront corniche. At one extreme of the harbour is the library, at the other the 15th-century Fort of Qaitbey, built on the foundations of the Pharos. A recent invitation to submit schemes for the redevelopment of the historic district resulted in proposals from a host of international starchitects including IM Pei (creator of the Louvre Pyramid), Mario Botta (who designed the Church of Santo Volto in Turin, Italy) and the Chicago-based partnership Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designers of New York’s Freedom Tower. All that is missing is the funding.
Right now, however, all attention is on another, equally ambitious headline-grabber: the Underwater Museum. The sea has done a far better job of preserving ancient Alexandria than humanity has. In recent years a team led by Empereur has discovered hundreds of stone blocks lying on the seafloor, subsequently identified as belonging to the Pharos lighthouse; a team headed by fellow underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio has brought to light large numbers of statues, sphinxes and ceramics in an area that he speculates may be the site of the palace of Cleopatra herself.
It seems a large area of ancient Alexandria lies underwater just metres off the shore.
Capitalising on this, a visionary scheme by French marine architect Jacques Rougerie combines a land entrance connecting to submerged fibreglass tunnels where visitors can view the antiquities lying on the seabed. Just this September Unesco announced that it would help Egypt build such an attraction, commencing with a feasibility study. If the study concludes that the museum could be built safely, planners say it could be completed in three years.
New museum or not, there is already significant new investment in the city. The commercial Western Harbour is in the process of being upgraded, while construction has begun on a new Alexandria International Airport. The moribund local hotel and dining scenes also received a shot in the arm with last year’s opening of the Four Seasons Hotel Alexandria, part of a new-build mall and marina-accessorised complex that has completely revitalised the eastern suburbs.
Like everything in this layered city, the Four Seasons squats squarely on history: in this case it sits on the site of the former San Stefano Hotel and Casino, a grande dame of the late 19th century that was modelled on the seaside resorts of the French Riviera. A campaign was run to save the old hotel, but it was in such a state of advanced rigor mortis it was a no-win affair and the bulldozers had their way in 2000.
Awad is adamant that Alexandria should not move forward without due respect for the past. ‘So much of value has already been lost,’ he says. However, he is optimistic a turning point may have been reached. Following years of pressure on the government a new law was recently ratified that makes it illegal to demolish the city’s listed buildings – a list Awad compiled and which runs to more than 1,000 items.
‘The problem,’ says Awad, ‘is going to be what do we do with buildings that we save?’ In the case of the Antoniadis Villa, a palatial 19th-century residence set in landscaped gardens, an answer has been found. Currently undergoing restoration, when complete the villa will house the headquarters of the Alexandria & Mediterranean Research Centre, an organisation devoted to documenting and publicising the city’s rich heritage. There will also be a museum and education centre, and accommodation for visiting academics, writers and artists.
‘People who are interested in culture are a small, marginal group,’ says Awad. Marginal they may be, but with the Antoniadis Villa, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 1,000 protected heritage buildings, a possible underwater museum and, who knows, a city centre redesigned by Mario Botta, they may have done enough to open a new chapter in the illustrious history of the city founded by Alexander.
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