David Roberts, born in 1796 near Edinburgh, was one of the most acclaimed landscape painters of the nineteenth century. In 1838 he left Europe for Egypt, where he drew all the main archaeological sites and Islamic monuments. These superb lithographs taken from his sketches and first published in London between 1842 and 1849 are a fine essay on his virtuosity and represent an unforgettable journey through time along the Nile Valley and across the Sinai peninsula.

Alexandria has had a checkered history since its foundation by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. From its glorious days as the intellectual center of the Hellenistic and early Christian world, it declined into a near-forgotten backwater with a population of only a few thousand at the time of the French invasion of 1798. Renewed prosperity and commercial growth came in the nineteenth century under Muhammad ‘Ali. Today it is Egypt’s second city and the favorite summer resort of millions of Egyptians.

In this guide to one of the world’s great cities, Michael Haag explores Alexandria’s past and present in word and picture, from the ancient Pharos to the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, from Anfushi to Montazah. He directs our curiosity not only toward the ancient monuments of the city and its fine Greco-Roman Museum and new National Museum, but also to the ambience of a more modern era, that cosmopolitan Alexandria alive with the literary echoes of Cavafy, Forster, and Durrell. Beautifully illustrated with 125 color photographs, this is a fascinating armchair tour of the pageant that is Alexandria.