Abu Mena
UNESCO World Heritage Site (1979) And ON THE LIST OF WORLD HERITAGE IN DANGER Since 2001: The Excavated Foundations Of The Largest Christian Pilgrimage City In Late Antique Egypt, Built Over The Tomb Of Saint Menas, Where Tens Of Thousands Came For Healing Water And Where The Water Table Rose Under The Ruins When The Surrounding Desert Was Irrigated, Collapsing Cisterns And Crypts · Borg El Arab, Alexandria
Fifty kilometres into the desert south-west of Alexandria lie the foundations of what was once one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the Christian world. Menas was martyred under Diocletian, buried out here, and the spring beside his tomb was held to heal; by the fifth century a city had grown around it, with a great basilica, baths fed by the holy water, hostels, workshops and streets, and little clay flasks stamped with the saint's image were carried from here as far as Britain and the Rhine. It was abandoned after the Arab conquest and forgotten under sand. UNESCO listed it in 1979 - and in 2001 put it on the List of World Heritage in Danger, because when the surrounding desert was opened to irrigated agriculture the water table rose, and the ruins began collapsing into their own cisterns and crypts. That is what you come to see: a world-class site being lost, slowly, to farming.
In the desert 50 km south-west of Alexandria beyond Borg El Arab, reached by a track off the Cairo-Alexandria desert road, Borg El Arab, Alexandria, Egypt
Daylight hours with a ticket when it is open, and WHETHER IT IS OPEN AT ALL IS THE FIRST THING TO ESTABLISH - this is a site on the List of World Heritage in Danger, sections have been backfilled or propped for safety, and visitors have been turned away at the gate in some periods. There is no visitor centre, no cafe and very little signage; a guard holds the key and the keys to anything covered. The modern Monastery of Saint Menas stands a short distance away, is a working Coptic community receiving visitors in daylight, and FASTING PERIODS RESTRICT VISITING on dates that move with the Coptic calendar. Reaching either needs a car: a track off the Cairo-Alexandria desert road beyond Borg El Arab, about an hour from central Alexandria, with no public transport to the gate.