Kom El Dikka

Polish archaeologists working since the 1960s uncovered an entire quarter of Roman and Byzantine Alexandria in the middle of the modern city: a small marble theatre or odeon with thirteen tiers of seating, a large imperial bath complex, cisterns, a residential villa with good mosaic floors, and, most unusually, a row of some twenty lecture halls with stepped benches and a raised teacher's seat, identified as an auditorium complex from the fifth and sixth centuries. That group is the clearest physical evidence anywhere of late antique higher education, and it gives a concrete setting to the city's reputation for learning. The theatre marble came from Europe and Asia Minor, and part of the seating carries later graffiti from circus factions.

History

In the early Roman period, from the 1st to the 3rd century, Kom el-Dikka was a well-off district of large villas with elaborate mosaic floors, and in the late 3rd century it was badly damaged in the upheavals of that time. In the 4th century public buildings replaced the houses, built together as one civic centre: a large imperial bath complex, rebuilt after earthquakes in 447 and 535 and fed by a great cistern, the only above-ground reservoir in the city; a small theatre used from the 4th century to the early 7th and remodelled around 500, its marble seats carrying 6th-century graffiti for the Blue and Green circus factions; and at least twenty lecture halls with stone benches, each for 20-30 students, where rhetoric, philosophy and medicine were taught from the 5th to the 7th centuries. It is the largest and most complete above-ground archaeological site in Alexandria (Wikipedia, Kom El Deka).

The main sights

• The marble odeon - thirteen tiers of imported marble seating.
• Twenty lecture halls - stepped benches and a raised teaching seat.
• The imperial baths - the heating and water system of a large complex.
• Villa mosaics - floors from a residential quarter, including a birds mosaic.

When to go

April to November. Mornings for the light in the theatre bowl. Two hours including the villa of the birds, which has a separate shelter. The site is central and easy to combine with the museums.

Before you go

It is a fenced archaeological park surrounded by traffic and apartment blocks, which limits the atmosphere. The villa of the birds sometimes carries an extra charge. Shade is limited. Signage explains the buildings but not the wider city well.

Nearby

The Graeco-Roman Museum and Alexandria National Museum are close; the Corniche is north.

Key facts