ALEXANDRIA turns its back on the rest of Egypt and faces the Mediterranean, as if contemplating its glorious past; a hybrid city characterized by Durrell as the "Capital of Memory". One of the great cities of antiquity, Alex slumbered for 1300 years until it was revived by Mohammed Ali and transformed by Europeans, who gave the city its present shape and made it synonymous with cosmopolitanism and decadence. This era came to an end in the 1950s with the mass flight of...read the whole Alexandria (El-Iskandariya) Travel Guides...