Deir el-Medina

Tucked into a desert valley on Luxor's West Bank, Deir el-Medina was home to the artisans and craftsmen who cut and painted the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The ancient Egyptians called it Set Maat, the Place of Truth, and its ruins are extraordinary precisely because they are so ordinary: the stone footprints of terraced workers' houses, laid out along a single street, give a rare intimate look at daily life rather than kingship.

The real treasures are the workers' own tombs, small but exquisitely decorated with some of the brightest, best-preserved paintings in all of Egypt, and a temple to Hathor added later by the Ptolemies. Because most visitors race between the big-name sites, you can often explore this village of the tomb-builders in near solitude.