This great lighthouse on the island of Pharos was one of the Seven Wonders of the world, and was reputed to have been over 110 metres (or 350 feet) high.

Intellectual luminaries such as Euclid, Archimedes and Plotinus lived there, and the city’s famous library, one of the largest libraries of the ancient world, dates from this period, as does the Pharos of Alexandria. The riches that came with the passage of merchants and the diversity of ideas and cultures they brought with them was an important factor in the development of Alexandria as a major centre of Hellenistic culture and learning.

As such, the city rapidly expanded to become one of the most important cities in the ancient world. The sack of Tyre by Alexander’s troops, also in 332 BC, further directed Mediterranean traffic towards Alexandria, which became the new centre of trade between Europe, Arabia and India. Fed by the waters of the Lake Maryut and the Nile, the port of Alexandria also benefitted from the safe anchorage conditions found off the island of Pharos, making it an attractive and practical point of transit for merchants travelling between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The city was constructed on the site of an ancient settlement, dating back to 1,500 BC, and was designed by Alexander’s personal architect, Dinocrates. Alexandria has played a pivotal role in Mediterranean trade ever since the city was founded in c.332 BC by Alexander (known as both ‘the Macedonian’ and ‘the Great’.) The second largest Egyptian city, after Cairo, and one of the largest ports on the Mediterranean coast, Alexandria was a major centre of civilization in the ancient world, controlling commerce between Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, and has continued throughout its long history to act as a vital crossing point for merchants and their trade on the maritime routes between Asia and Europe.

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