Photo: Шухрат Саъдиев (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio tour of the modern city that grew from Muhammad Ali's harbour into a cosmopolitan port: Ras el-Tin Palace, where King Farouk left for exile in 1952, the Mosque of Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi, Tahrir Square, where Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956, the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Coptic cathedrals and the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, the Windsor and Cecil hotels, Saad Zaghloul Square, the Corniche and the Raml tram, Athineos, St Saba, the Cavafy Museum and the Opera House, then the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and its museums, Stanley Bridge, the Mahmoud Said and Royal Jewellery museums and the gardens of Montaza. 22 narrated stops: about 7 km from Ras el-Tin through the centre to the Bibliotheca, then a driven leg east along the Corniche to Stanley, Zizinia and Montaza, some 15 km further. Museums, palaces and places of worship open on their own schedules.
22 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 320 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 48 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Ras el-Tin Palace, Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi Mosque, Tahrir Square, Saint Catherine Cathedral, Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, St Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, Windsor Palace Hotel, Cecil Hotel, Saad Zaghloul Square.
Corniche, Raml Station and the Raml Tram, Athineos, Church of St Saba, Cavafy Museum, Alexandria Opera House.
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Bibliotheca Alexandrina Museums, Stanley Bridge, Mahmoud Saeed Museum, Royal Jewellery Museum, Montaza Palace Gardens.
The old Manshiyya, where Nasser survived an assassination attempt in 1954 and announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956.
Rebuilt in 1850 after the French bombardment of 1798, seating some 700, and reopened in 2020 after a long restoration.
Built in 1929 on the Corniche, used by British intelligence in the Second World War, and written into Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar.
The flat where the poet C. P. Cavafy lived from 1907 until the end of his life, restored between 2022 and 2024.
Snøhetta's library, inaugurated in 2002, ringed by a granite wall carved with some 4,000 characters from about 120 scripts.
A 1919 palace in Zizinia holding the jewels and possessions of the Muhammad Ali dynasty, among them King Farouk's gold chess set.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 22 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 22 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Modern Alexandria — the Corniche, the Bibliotheca and the Cosmopolitan City, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
22 narration points, including Ras el-Tin Palace, Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi Mosque, Tahrir Square, Saint Catherine Cathedral and Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation. That is about 35 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Yes, from Alexandria. There is no start time and no group to keep up with, so you can stop at any point and head back to the ship. Keep your own eye on the all-aboard time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~4 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 22 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.