Sister Library of Alexandria

Beneath the ruins of the Serapeum on Alexandria's Amoud el-Sawari hill lies one of the city's most atmospheric surprises: a rock-cut underground gallery lined with small niches once used to store scrolls, sometimes called the daughter or sister library of the legendary Great Library of Alexandria. Descend the worn stairs into the cool, dim passages and you are walking through what remains of a temple to the god Serapis, a centre of learning in the Greco-Roman city.

Above ground, Pompey's Pillar, a single towering red granite column, dominates the site, flanked by sphinxes and scattered masonry. It is a modest ruin compared with the pyramids, but it carries the ghost of Alexandria's intellectual golden age, when this was the greatest storehouse of knowledge in the ancient world.