Citadel of Qaitbay

Listen first. Waves break against the rocks below the walls, and salt spray drifts across the stone causeway. Gulls call overhead. Behind you, the long curve of the Alexandria Corniche runs back toward the city, lined with pale buildings and wooden fishing boats painted blue, red and yellow. Ahead stands a sand-coloured fortress at the very end of the land. This is the Citadel of Qaitbay. It sits where one of the most famous buildings of the ancient world once stood.

Before the fortress, there was the Pharos. This was the great lighthouse of Alexandria, built in the third century before Christ under the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great. Ancient writers counted it among the Seven Wonders of the World. Its fire guided ships into the harbour for many centuries. The island it stood on was called Pharos, and the word became the root of the word for lighthouse in several languages, including French and Italian.

The lighthouse did not fall in one day. A series of earthquakes damaged it over several centuries. By the early fourteenth century, much of the tower had collapsed. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta described it in ruins when he passed through Alexandria. On a later visit, he wrote that it had decayed so much that he could no longer enter it. After that, the site lay as a heap of broken stone at the edge of the sea.

Then came Sultan al-Ashraf Qaitbay. He was a Mamluk ruler. The Mamluks were a class of soldier-rulers who controlled Egypt and Syria in the late Middle Ages. In the 1470s, a new power was rising to the north — the Ottoman Turks. Alexandria was Egypt's door to the Mediterranean, and Qaitbay wanted that door locked. Construction of this fortress began in 1477, on the old foundations of the Pharos.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The builders likely reused stone from the fallen lighthouse. As you walk around the outer walls, look for large blocks and dark granite pieces set among the lighter limestone. Some of these are believed to come from ancient structures on the site. So the fortress is not simply built on top of the wonder. In a quiet way, parts of the wonder may still be inside its walls.

Now look at the shape of the citadel. At the centre stands a square keep, a solid tower of several storeys. Rounded towers mark its corners. Around it, a strong outer wall encloses a wide courtyard. On the sea side, the walls face open water, where an attack by ships would come. This is military architecture, designed for cannon and archers. The decoration is simple, and the stone is thick.

Step inside the keep and the light changes. The air feels cooler, and the sound of the sea grows faint. Narrow passages lead between rooms, and small openings frame bright pieces of blue sky and water. On one level, there is a small mosque. It has a prayer niche, called a mihrab, that points toward Mecca. Soldiers lived, watched and prayed in the same building. Faith and defence shared these walls.

The Mamluks did not hold Egypt for long after the citadel was finished. In 1517, the Ottomans conquered the country anyway. The fortress continued to serve, but its importance rose and fell with the city. Alexandria itself shrank for a long period and became a much smaller port town than in ancient times. The citadel stayed here at the harbour mouth through these quieter centuries, watching ships that grew fewer.

In the nineteenth century, Egypt changed fast under Muhammad Ali, a ruler who modernised the army and the navy. Alexandria grew again into a major Mediterranean port. The fortress was updated for the new age of guns. Then, in 1882, a British fleet bombarded Alexandria, and the citadel was badly damaged. The scars of war came to the old stone. In the early twentieth century, conservation work began to repair it.

Now turn toward the water. Here is the second surprise. In the 1990s, divers and archaeologists working in the sea just off this point found thousands of ancient stone pieces on the seabed. There were columns, sphinxes, and parts of large statues. Some experts believe that some of the huge blocks belonged to the lighthouse itself. The story of the Pharos did not end in the ruins. Part of it still lies a few metres under the waves in front of you.

Climb to the upper levels if you can. From the battlements, the whole Eastern Harbour opens in a wide arc. You can see the line of the Corniche, apartment blocks with old balconies, and the modern glass disc of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the distance. That library was built to honour the great library of the ancient city. From here, ancient and modern Alexandria sit in a single view.

The area around the citadel has its own life. Families walk the causeway in the evening. Young couples sit on the sea wall. Fishermen mend nets and sell the morning catch in the nearby Anfushi district, an old neighbourhood of narrow streets and fish restaurants. Vendors sell roasted corn, cold drinks and small toys. On Fridays and holidays, the space fills with local visitors, and you hear Egyptian Arabic everywhere around you.

Before you leave, stand for a moment by the outer wall and face the sea. Feel the wind, which almost never stops here. Think of the long line of people who stood on this same point — lighthouse keepers, Mamluk soldiers, Ottoman gunners, travellers like Ibn Battuta. Each saw a different building. The sea was the same. As you walk back along the causeway, look over your shoulder once. The fortress stays low and pale against the water, keeping the harbour mouth as it has for over five hundred years.