Akhenaten Museum

The Akhenaten Museum is Minya's ambitious tribute to the heretic pharaoh who broke with Egypt's gods to worship the sun-disc Aten and built a brand-new capital, Amarna, on the desert plain just downriver. Long in the making, it is designed to gather the scattered story of Middle Egypt's most revolutionary period into one place, close to where it actually unfolded.

For travellers exploring the region's tombs and the ruins of Amarna itself, it offers vital context: the strange, elongated art style of the Amarna age, the drama of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and the swift erasure of their religion after their deaths. In a part of Egypt with almost no tourist infrastructure, it signals Minya's growing bid to put its extraordinary heritage on the map.