Grand Egyptian Museum

Egypt's collections long outgrew the historic museum on Tahrir Square. The Grand Egyptian Museum was designed to give them room, with a vast atrium, a grand staircase lined with royal statues and a façade facing the pyramids. Galleries opened in stages before the official opening in November 2025.

When Howard Carter found Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, it held more than 5,000 objects: chariots, beds, thrones, jewellery, shrines and the nested coffins. For a century only part of this could be shown at once. At the Grand Egyptian Museum the collection is presented together, arranged to tell the story of the young king's life and burial.

The 11-metre granite statue of Ramses II that greets visitors in the atrium stood in a traffic-choked square in central Cairo for more than 50 years. In 2006 it was moved to Giza, and in 2018 it was moved again, upright, into the museum.

The museum is designed to hold tens of thousands of objects spanning more than 5,000 years, many never displayed before. Visitors are met in the forecourt by a hanging obelisk of Ramses II, which you can walk beneath to see the cartouche carved on its base, and inside by the colossal Ramses in the atrium. The Grand Staircase rises six storeys past kings, queens and gods, with a view of the pyramids at the top.

The main galleries are arranged by theme and period, and a separate building holds Khufu's reassembled cedar boat, moved here from beside the Great Pyramid in 2021 in one piece.

The museum includes one of the largest conservation centres in the world, where specialists treat everything from textiles and papyrus to wooden funerary boats. Much of Tutankhamun's burial equipment — chariots, beds, shrines and linen — was cleaned and conserved here before going on show.