1Alexandria, the second city of Egypt since the mid-19^th century, sits on a thin coastal strip west of the Nile Delta, hemmed in to the south by Lake Mariout. While the town can longer be considered one of the major ports of the Mediterranean basin, Alexandria’s Dekheila facility is the nation’s largest port, handling 56 million tons in 2017, and plays a crucial role in external trade and domestic supply. The city grew continuously during the 20^th century on the back of industrial development, reaching almost one million inhabitants by around 1950 and causing the built environment to stretch along the seafront. The uncontrolled urban growth of the past three decades has in part come at the cost of the old building stock whatever its architectural value.

The built environment: the memory and identity of a cosmopolitan town

2Alexandria is a palimpsest bearing traces of different historical eras, from Graeco-Roman ruins to Belle Époque tenements and Art Deco villas. The long history of the town, founded in 331 BC, has fuelled many literary, fanciful and historical accounts insisting on its role as a melting pot, bringing together different foreign communities whether in the Roman period or at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th. This cosmopolitan culture disappeared in the 1950s when the majority of foreigners (Italians, Greeks, French, Levantines) departed along with the Jewish community. The present-day town, with traffic jams on the Corniche, a dilapidated downtown area, and a jumbled seafront of mismatched high-rises, hardly conjures up the Alexandria of legend. Rent control laws, the reduction of the State budget, and the lack of public sponsorship explain the deteriorating state of the buildings in the centre of town.

3Since the 1990s Alexandria has suffered from real estate speculation and an unprecedented boom in construction, most of it unregulated. While ancient vestiges are legally protected (Law no. 117 of 1983), heritage buildings of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, often poorly maintained, are simply demolished. This process has accelerated since 2011. Among the landmark buildings to have been lost in recent years are the Villa Aghion, designed by the Perret brothers (destroyed in 2014), the Villa Ambron (home to Lawrence Durrell during the Second World War) and the Villa Cicurel (both demolished in 2016). One could also mention the Majestic Hotel, the Rialto Cinema and the Al-Salam Theatre, which was replaced by a hotel in 2016. Some of the now missing buildings featured on a list of classified constructions that was published in 2008 by the Alexandria Governorate. Demolition has been facilitated by the indifference of the local authorities, which are not inclined to apply the protection legislation nor very quick to expropriate the threatened buildings, and by limited funds on the part of the owners, many of whom are hostile to the heritage preservation laws and hope to see their property de-listed. In addition, there is a shortage of information and gaps in the data concerning this more recent architectural heritage due to a lack of national records. Thus, market forces are erasing the physical traces of history and disturbing the urban fabric by breaking up the harmony of the old quarters and by isolating historic buildings, which are now surrounded by modern constructions. The destruction of buildings steeped in history effectively means the disappearance of urban landmarks and the repositories of memory and identity.

Citizen engagement for architectural heritage

4In response to the deterioration and disappearance of the built heritage several collective initiatives have sprung up during the first decades of the 21^st century aimed at preserving this architecture through documentation, dissemination and public awareness campaigns. Alongside foreign institutions (Swedish Institute, Centre d’Études Alexandrines) and quasi-governmental establishments (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) already in the business of heritage promotion, certain grassroots movements have also appeared, especially after 2011. These associations have benefited from the involvement of former activists engaged in the 25 January revolution on the lookout for new causes. The Save Alex pressure group has brought together architects, lawyers and people in the tourism industry to focus on, for example, lobbying activities to promote public awareness and alert the authorities to the importance of this heritage and to prevent demolitions. The research project Description of Alexandria, initiated by Mohamed Gohar, intends to catalogue and document this architectural and cultural heritage, particularly by drawing the buildings and by collecting accounts of their occupants in order to spread awareness of their architectural value. Such civil society engagement in the defence of heritage is part of the redefinition of local identity rooted in an understanding and an emphasis of Alexandria’s cultural distinctiveness.

7.9 Notable monuments of Alexandria: selected images