Luxor

In Europe, people are very proud when there is a building that's, say, 800 years old - and rightfully so. Thereby Europe beats the USA by far, for in America older than two centuries has to be considered ancient. However, Europe - including Rome and Athens and in fact all of Greece - without a doubt loses to Egypt - and in Egypt there is one town that stands out like no other: Luxor - which people often call "the World's largest Open Air Museum". This name is more than justified.

Luxor has an abundance of ancient monuments that blows all proportions, and virtually all of them were built around the beginning of the second millennium BC, hence around 4000 years ago.

Some of them have become iconic, like Luxor Temple or the Karnak temple complex, or the Valley of the Kings. Some of the sites are within the modern city of Luxor, others are in its immediate vicinity, and some of them form a special connection with their surrounding environment, like the magnificent Deir el-Bahri temple complex, which was built into a a mountain.

Obviously, Luxor is highly attractive for tourists - so Luxor International Airport offers flights to many countries. Luxor is actually more than a big museum: it is also a city with a population of 376 thousand people. Of course, tourism is its main economic branch, but far from the only one.

The atmosphere in Luxor is cosmopolitan and most inhabitants have some command of the English language. The recent economic boom, that Egypt has been seeing within the last years, has also shown some positive effects in Luxor. As in most places in Egypt, the desert is not far, and it is almost without people. Thanks to modern watering technologies, the beginning of the desert does not mean the natural border of human settlements - so in fact Luxor is spreading out in multiple directions.