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| The Maritime Museum in Alexandria is located in the Quaitbeit Citadel, erected on the exact spot, where the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria used to be in 1480 |
Alexandria was founded in 302 BC by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great on the spot of the already existing small Egyptian town of Rhakotis. Alexander considered the location perfect for establishing a powerful Hellenic centre in Egypt and a convenient base for Hellenic expansion in the East. Curiously enough, Alexander never returned alive to see the city he founded and named after himself flourish. For that is what happened immediately - the city, already having Egyptian and Jewish communities, was flocked by Greeks from all over Greece and quickly became an important trade centre between the Hellenic world and the Arabs and Indians. In less than a century Alexandria grew bigger than Carthage. Evidence suggests that there was a time when the city was the largest in the world and for several centuries was second only to almighty Rome. However, although Alexandria had an extremely mixed population, and had developed into an important port, connecting the Mediterranean with the East and the Nile delta, it apparently lacked a cosmopolitan spirit - on several occasions during the 3rd and 2nd century BC there were military collisions under the Ptolemaic dynasty, who continued to rule the city and Egypt after the death of its founder. The Ptolemaians brought prosperity to the city and built the ancient Library of Alexandria (Bibliotheca Alexanrina), the biggest one in ancient times, which would become a city staple for more than 10 centuries. The city was widely associated with the Lighthouse of Alexandria, as well -one of the Seven wonders of the ancient world.
In 80 BC the city voluntarily accepted Roman jurisdiction. After it had been almost ruined around 115 AD during another series of Jewish-Greek civil wars, Emperor Hadrian rebuilt it. However, one of his successors, Emperor Carcalla, offended by the locals while visiting the city, sentenced to death all young men capable of bearing arms. After that it seemed that for some time there was no stopping of bad luck chasing the city. In 365 a tsunami, following the Crete earthquake, hit the city so hard, that even a century later the locals regarded 21 July as the "day of horror". The 4th century was notable also for the intensity, with which newly-christianised Romans prosecuted "the pagans". Emperor Theodosius I even ordered all pagan sacred places to be destroyed. In 616 Alexandria fell in the hands of king Khosrau II of Persia, and although the Greeks claimed it a few years later, shortly after that, after a 14-month siege the city was conquered by the Arabs and its development has been associated with the Arab world ever since. Although the Arabs were pretty impressed by the city monuments, theatres and marble-lined streets, their arrival marked the beginning of a decay, which would see Cairo and even the small neighbouring port town of Rosetta superseed Alexadria`s shrinking economy. A new chance was given to the city in 1798 when it was seized by Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon saw the capacity of Alexandria`s convenient geographic position and took steps to the revival of the city, which would only remain under French authority for 3 years, when the British took it from them in the famous Battle of Alexandria on 21 March 1801. Ottoman governor of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, started rebuilding the city and by the middle of the 19th century it had returned a good deal of its past prosperity. In 1882 the British occupied the city again. Foreign intellectuals, traders and manufacturers from all over the Mediterranean flocked again to the city, restoring it to its cosmopolitan, long-forgotten past. However, the beginning of the Suez crisi saw the end of the cosmopolitan spirit of the city with many foreign businesses having been nationalised and most of the foreign inhabitants (constituting about 40% of the population) left Alexandria for good. In 1954 Israel forces bombed Alexandria in a campaign that would be remembered as the Lavon Affair. A few months later the city would witness an attempt to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser.
