Monday, May 10, 2010

Luxor's holiday temples of boom

Times Online (Karen Robinson)

Apart from the opening paragraphs about the redevelopment of Luxor this article is about property development and is essentially off-topic, but my friend Jane Akshar gets a mention so I had to include it :-)

If you want to know what it felt like to be a pharaoh, Samir Farag is the man to ask. As the governor of Luxor, on the banks of the Nile, 450 miles south of Cairo, he is presiding over a development masterplan even the most ambitious Egyptian temple-builders would have envied.

At the centre of it all is an effort to turn his city, home to almost a third of the ancient monuments in Egypt, into an “open-air museum”, with the excavation and restoration of the 3,000-year-old Avenue of Sphinxes, a die-straight 1½-mile road, flanked by more than 1,000 sphinxes, that connects the temples of Luxor and Karnak.

Yet, even as these mighty works proceed, the needs of the British seeker of sunshine property are also in Farag’s thoughts. An important part of the overall plan is El Tod. This bare plateau, six miles south of the city, with a commanding view of the Nile and its lush west bank, is to house a huge resort complex. The 600-hectare site, says Farag, will have hotels, a golf course and residential units, “all completely designed for foreigners”.

1 comment:

Jane Akshar said...

Thanks Andie, pretty cool to get a mention in the Sunday Times, ain't itthoca