Glorious past and future for Alexandria
Modern Alexandria sits on top of two great civilizations. A battle to reclaim its past and to build according to Alexandria’s rich cultural heritage is led by Dr Mohammed Awad, architect, historian and director of the Alexandria & Mediterranean Research Center.
His campaigning has earned him respect and enmity in about equal measure. His most controversial action was to promote the idea of erecting an equestrian statue of the city’s founder, Alexander the Great. Designed in Greece and presented as a gift by various Greek associations in 2000, the monument enraged many Egyptians who – only 2,331 years on from the event – still viewed the Macedonian as an imperialist conqueror.
Image via Wikipedia
Another of Awad’s notable campaigns was in the mid-1990s when he took a stand against the bulldozing of the site where the city’s new library was to be built without prior archaeological excavation work. The library was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, intended to revive the spirit of the lost Alexandrian library of classical times. Completed in 2002, it is a giant 160-meter-diameter glazed disc that emerges out of layers of history and tilts its face to the Mediterranean. Its solid granite drum is inscribed with characters from every known alphabet, some 120 scripts, while the great amphitheater of the reading room sits 2,000 readers. The library is only the second in the world to hold a full copy of the Internet Archive, which is a snapshot of every page hosted on the web between 1996 and 2006, or 1.5 petabytes (that is 1 followed by 15 zeroes) of data stored on 880 computers. This July it was host to Wikimania 2008, the annual conference for people involved in web-based Wikimedia projects. Last October the Bibliotheca celebrated placing its 555,555th book on the shelves (Euclid’s Elements, appropriately enough a product of the original Library of Alexandria).
But Bibliotheca Alexandrina is far more than books. The hope is that the library can act as a catalyst for nothing less than an intellectual and cultural rebirth of the city.
At the heart of Alexandria is the Eastern Harbor. At one extreme of the harbor is the library, at the other the 15th-century Fort of Qaitbey, built on the foundations of the Pharos. A recent invitation to submit schemes for the redevelopment of the historic district resulted in proposals from a host of international starchitects including IM Pei (creator of the Louvre Pyramid), Mario Botta (who designed the Church of Santo Volto in Turin, Italy) and the Chicago-based partnership Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designers of New York’s Freedom Tower.
Right now, however, all attention is on another, equally ambitious headline-grabber: the Underwater Museum. The sea has done a far better job of preserving ancient Alexandria than humanity has. In recent years a team led by French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur has discovered hundreds of stone blocks lying on the seafloor, subsequently identified as belonging to the Pharos lighthouse. A team headed by fellow underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio has brought to light large numbers of statues, sphinxes and ceramics in an area that he speculates may be the site of the palace of Cleopatra herself. It seems a large area of ancient Alexandria lies underwater just meters off the shore.
New museum or not, there is already significant new investment in the city. The commercial Western Harbor is in the process of being upgraded, while construction has begun on a new Alexandria International Airport. The moribund local hotel and dining scenes also received a shot in the arm with last year’s opening of the Four Seasons Hotel Alexandria.
Following years of pressure on the government a new law was recently ratified that makes it illegal to demolish the city’s listed buildings – a list Awad compiled and which runs to more than 1,000 items.
“The problem,’ says Awad, ‘is going to be what do we do with buildings that we save?” In the case of the Antoniadis Villa, a palatial 19th-century residence set in landscaped gardens, an answer has been found. Currently undergoing restoration, when complete the villa will house the headquarters of the Alexandria & Mediterranean Research Center. There will also be a museum and education center, and accommodation for visiting academics, writers and artists.
“People who are interested in culture are a small, marginal group,” says Awad. Marginal they may be, but with the Antoniadis Villa, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 1,000 protected heritage buildings, a possible underwater museum and, who knows, a city center redesigned by Mario Botta, they may have done enough to open a new chapter in the illustrious history of the city founded by Alexander.
Excerpted from an article by Andrew Humphreys for CNN Traveller
