Explore Giza Governorate: the Pyramids, the Grand Egyptian Museum & Saqqara

The Giza Plateau holds the three Old Kingdom royal pyramids and the Great Sphinx in a single archaeological zone at the western edge of the city. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only one of the seven Ancient Wonders still standing, originally rose 146 metres and stands about 139 today, on a base some 230 metres a side, built of some 2.3 million limestone blocks averaging 2.5 tonnes each. Inside, a low ascending passage and the tall Grand Gallery climb to the King's Chamber and its granite sarcophagus. The Pyramid of Khafre, the second largest, looks the tallest of the three because it stands on higher ground, and it keeps its original casing of Tura limestone near the apex — the only one of the three that still shows how smooth the pyramids looked when they were finished. The Pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest, was clad in red granite for its lower courses, some of which survives. The Great Sphinx, 73 metres long and 20 metres high, was carved from a single outcrop of the plateau's limestone and crouches beside the Valley Temple of Khafre at the eastern foot of the site.

The Grand Egyptian Museum stands on the desert edge beside the Giza Plateau: the world's largest archaeological museum devoted to a single civilisation, with more than 100,000 artefacts. A colossal standing statue of Ramesses II, some 3,200 years old, fills the atrium at the entrance, and the Grand Staircase beyond it, lined with royal statues and sarcophagi, rises to the main galleries, which trace 5,000 years of Egyptian art and craft. The centrepiece is the complete Tutankhamun collection: more than 5,000 objects from his tomb (KV62), many of them displayed together for the first time since Howard Carter found the burial in 1922. The golden death mask, some 10 kg of gold, the nested coffins and the chariots share the galleries with the intimate personal objects — sandals, board games, childhood furniture — that humanise the boy king.

A day at Giza starts at the plateau's opening time, when the light is low on the stone and the tour coaches have not yet arrived; by mid-morning the site is crowded. There is almost no shade, and from May to September afternoons regularly reach 35 °C and above, so the open plateau is a morning's work. The entry ticket covers the open site, and the Great Pyramid's interior takes a separate one; its passages are hot and cramped. The panoramic viewpoint behind the Pyramid of Menkaure lines up all three pyramids with Cairo's skyline behind them. Camel and horse rides are offered persistently: agree the full price, including the ride back, before mounting, because a price left open is one of the monument scams known across Egypt. The afternoon then belongs to the Grand Egyptian Museum next door, out of the heat and without a drive back across the city.

After dark, the Sound and Light Show lights the Sphinx and the three pyramids while a recorded narration tells their story to an audience seated facing the Sphinx. The narration is theatrical; the monuments lit against the night sky are the reason to go. The show is narrated in several languages and lasts about an hour. From November to March, evenings in the desert turn cool, and a light jacket is worth bringing.

Saqqara, some 15 km south of the Giza pyramids on the desert escarpment above the Nile floodplain, is one of Egypt's oldest royal burial grounds and was the cemetery of ancient Memphis. Its centrepiece is the Step Pyramid of Djoser (27th century BCE), designed by Imhotep, the architect later deified as a god of medicine: Egypt's first pyramid and its earliest large building in cut stone, the step from mud-brick mastaba tombs to the true pyramids of Dahshur and Giza. The surrounding complex has been extensively restored, from the entrance colonnade to the great south court and the heb-sed court. At the southern edge of the complex, the Pyramid of Unas (24th century BCE) carries the Pyramid Texts, the oldest known Egyptian religious texts, carved on the walls of its burial chamber. North-west of the Step Pyramid, the Serapeum is an underground catacomb where the sacred Apis bulls were buried in massive granite sarcophagi of some 70 tonnes each — one of Egypt's eeriest sites. Among the nobles' tombs, the mastaba of the vizier Mereruka is a warren of rooms carved with scenes of daily life, and the Imhotep Museum at the site entrance puts the architecture in context.

Dahshur, about 10 km south of Saqqara, holds two pyramids built for Sneferu, Khufu's father, around 2600 BCE. The sides of the Bent Pyramid change angle partway up, from 54° to 43°, almost certainly because the steeper angle was causing structural problems, and it keeps more of its original smooth limestone casing than any other Egyptian pyramid — the clearest sense of how Khufu's and Khafre's pyramids looked when new. The Red Pyramid, named for the reddish limestone of its core, is Egypt's first successful true smooth-sided pyramid, the model for the Great Pyramid a generation later. Visitors go inside: stairs climb the north face to the entrance, and a long, steep corridor descends to chambers roofed with corbelled vaults. On the horizon, the Black Pyramid of Amenemhat III, from the Middle Kingdom, survives as a ruined mud-brick core.

Memphis, about 24 km south of central Cairo on the valley floor a few kilometres east of Saqqara, was the capital of the Old Kingdom pharaohs whose pyramids line the desert edge above it. The ancient city was largely dismantled for building stone in the Islamic period, so what survives is shown as an open-air museum at the village of Mit Rahina. Its centrepiece is a colossal limestone statue of Ramesses II, over 10 metres long, displayed lying down in a purpose-built hall because its legs are too damaged for it to stand. In the garden outside stands an alabaster sphinx of some 80 tonnes, carved from a single block in the New Kingdom. The site has its own ticket, and the visit takes 30 to 60 minutes.