Best Things to Do in Cairo, Egypt (Complete Guide)

Is the Grand Egyptian Museum open, and how do you get in?

Yes. The Grand Egyptian Museum is fully open. Its official opening ceremony was held on 1 November 2025 and general ticketed visiting began on 4 November 2025, the 103rd anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. All twelve main galleries are open, along with the Grand Hall and Grand Stairs, the two dedicated Tutankhamun galleries and the Khufu Boats Museum. Any guide that still describes the museum as unopened, partly open, or restricted to a handful of rooms is out of date, and there is a lot of that text still circulating.

Two practical things shape the visit. The museum stands about two kilometres from the Giza pyramid plateau, not in central Cairo, so it belongs with your pyramid day rather than a downtown day. And entry is by timed slot booked in advance at tickets.gem.eg, which states in plain terms that it is the only official website for buying tickets. The older visit-gem.com address simply redirects there. Book before you go rather than turning up at the door.

Published hours are split across the week:

• Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: the complex is open 08:30 to 19:00, the galleries 09:00 to 18:00.
• Wednesday and Saturday: the complex is open 08:30 to 22:00, the galleries 09:00 to 21:00.
• Last entry is one hour before the galleries close, every day.

On price, one date matters more than the number itself. The museum’s board of directors, chaired by the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, decided in April 2026 to raise admission from 1 November 2026. Until then a foreign adult pays USD 30, rising to USD 35; Egyptian adults pay 200 EGP, rising to 220 EGP, and Egyptian students and over-60s pay 100 EGP, rising to 120 EGP. The foreign rate is set in dollars, so the exact pound figure at checkout moves with the exchange rate. If your trip falls either side of 1 November 2026, that is a real reason to book early. Re-check the price on the official site before you pay, because Egyptian entry fees are revised often.

Those two late nights are the most useful line on the timetable. A Wednesday or Saturday evening slot puts you in the Tutankhamun galleries after the coach groups have gone, and the glazed front wall of the building faces the pyramids. Budget four hours if you want the Tutankhamun material properly. The full set of 5,398 Tutankhamun pieces is displayed together for the first time, out of roughly 24,000 objects on show and more than 100,000 in the collection, and visitors routinely under-plan it.

Giza: the new gate, the shuttle, and what the 700 EGP ticket does not cover

Giza is a separate site with a separate ticket, and the way you enter changed in 2025. The main visitor entrance moved from the old gate by the Mena House to a new visitor centre on the Fayoum Highway, with parking for more than 1,200 cars and 200 coaches. Private cars and tour coaches are no longer driven up onto the plateau itself. You walk between the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, or use the electric shuttle buses that circulate between the stops, including the panorama point where all three line up.

General area admission for a foreign adult is 700 EGP, with a student rate of 350 EGP against a valid card. The ministry’s own listing spells out what that ticket does not include, and this is where people get caught: it does not cover the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, the Pyramid of Menkaure, the Tomb of Meresankh III or the Workers’ Cemetery. Each of those is bought separately, and the Great Pyramid is capacity-limited and sells out early in the day. The same listing still shows vehicle charges of 25 EGP for a car or taxi, 50 EGP for a micro-bus, 75 EGP for a coaster and 100 EGP for a bus.

Two rules worth knowing before you plan the day. The ministry lists the Giza plateau as open 08:00 to 16:00, so a late-afternoon arrival does not work; treat this as an early start, and re-check the hours close to your date. And the Supreme Council of Antiquities has moved the Giza plateau onto card payment along with the Citadel of Salah al-Din and the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, so bring a card rather than relying on banknotes at the window.

Whether the interior ticket earns its money depends entirely on you. The passage into Khufu is a steep, low, stiflingly warm climb that ends in a bare granite chamber with nothing decorated in it. If you dislike enclosed spaces or you are visiting in summer, skip it without regret. The Sphinx enclosure and the panorama point are inside general admission, and they are what most people remember afterwards. Treat camel and horse offers as a negotiation you enter deliberately or not at all, because the pricing is informal and disputes at the end of a ride are the commonest complaint at the site.

What is left at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, and where the mummies went

The old Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square did not close when the Grand Egyptian Museum opened. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, confirmed that the museum stays open to the public as usual and that only the Tutankhamun gallery shuts as those treasures leave for Giza. The ministry lists it as open 09:00 to 17:00 daily with the ticket window closing at 16:00, shortened to 09:00 to 16:00 during Ramadan with last tickets at 15:00. A foreign adult pays 550 EGP, a foreign student 275 EGP, and an audio guide is 75 EGP.

What changed is the headline act. The Tutankhamun material, including the gold mask, is now at Giza. Tahrir keeps the Narmer Palette, the Old Kingdom sculpture including the statues of Khafre, Menkaure and Djoser, and the sheer stacked density of a nineteenth-century museum that never really got thinned out. That density is the point: it is a different experience from the purpose-built galleries at Giza, and if you like objects rather than staging, you may prefer it.

One correction worth carrying, because a lot of older writing gets it wrong. The royal mummies are at neither museum. Twenty-two of them, eighteen kings and four queens including Ramesses II, Thutmose III and Hatshepsut, were moved from Tahrir to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation at Fustat in the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade on 3 April 2021, and they are displayed there in a dedicated hall. If seeing pharaonic mummies is on your list, that is a third address in a third part of the city, and you cannot fold it into either of the other two.

Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo and Khan el-Khalili

The medieval city is the half of Cairo that most short trips skip, and it needs a different rhythm from the monuments. Start at the Citadel of Salah al-Din, the walled hilltop compound that holds the Mosque of Muhammad Ali with its Ottoman-style domes, the Mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad and several museums. It is one of the sites the Supreme Council of Antiquities has moved onto card payment. What the ticket covers, what it costs and when the gates shut all change from year to year, and the ministry’s own site is the only place worth trusting for the current position, so check it before you set out and expect a shorter day than a European museum gives you. Three to four hours does it justice, and the terrace gives you the clearest view of how the city actually sits.

Coptic Cairo is compact and walkable. The Hanging Church, Ben Ezra Synagogue and the surrounding churches inside the Roman walls of Babylon are places of worship rather than ticketed attractions, and they close to visitors during services, so a weekday morning is the safest slot. The Coptic Museum in the same compound is separately ticketed. Metro Line 1 stops at Mar Girgis directly outside the gate, which makes this the easiest sight in Cairo to reach without a car.

Khan el-Khalili is a working market with a tourist frontage. The lanes nearest the main entrance sell alabaster and papyrus at visitor prices; walk two or three streets deeper and you reach copper workers, spice sellers and fabric traders serving Cairenes. It runs late, and evening is when the surrounding streets are best. Prices are negotiable in the tourist lanes and largely fixed in the working ones, so read which you are in before you start haggling. The pedestrianised al-Muizz li-Din Allah street, with its run of Mamluk mosques and madrasas, is the real architecture of the quarter and is lit at night.

Getting around Cairo without losing half your day to traffic

Cairo traffic is the single biggest constraint on a short itinerary, and the metro is the only transport in the city that ignores it. The Ministry of Transport restructured fares on 27 March 2026: 10 EGP for up to 9 stations, up from 8; 12 EGP for up to 16, up from 10; 15 EGP for up to 23, unchanged; and 20 EGP for more than 23 and up to 39 stations, also unchanged. Buy a paper single at the window or use the rechargeable contactless card, tapping in and out. Each train reserves carriages for women, marked on the platform.

Where the metro does not reach, ride-hailing apps are the sane default, because the fare is agreed in the app and you avoid the meter argument. Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum are not on the metro, so plan a car for that day and start early: the run out to the plateau in morning peak can take well over an hour from downtown.

The airport is the other trap. Metro Line 3 currently terminates at Adly Mansour on the north-eastern edge of the city, and the connection on to Cairo International Airport is a bus rapid transit link from that interchange rather than a train. A metro branch to the airport is planned but is still under construction with no confirmed opening date, so do not build an arrival or departure plan around a rail link that is not there yet. Allow a generous margin either way, particularly for an afternoon departure.

At a glance

Frequently asked questions

Is the Grand Egyptian Museum open in 2026?

Yes, and completely. The official opening was on 1 November 2025 and public ticketed visiting began on 4 November 2025. All twelve main galleries, the Grand Hall and Grand Stairs, both Tutankhamun galleries and the Khufu Boats Museum are open. Entry is by timed slot booked in advance at tickets.gem.eg, which the museum states is its only official ticket website.

How much is a Grand Egyptian Museum ticket, and is it going up?

A foreign adult pays USD 30 as of 5 September 2026. The museum’s board, chaired by the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, decided in April 2026 to raise that to USD 35 from 1 November 2026, with Egyptian adults going from 200 EGP to 220 EGP and Egyptian students and over-60s from 100 EGP to 120 EGP. The foreign price is set in dollars, so the pound figure moves with the rate.

Do you still need to visit the old Egyptian Museum in Tahrir?

If you have three days in Cairo, yes. Tahrir lost the Tutankhamun collection to Giza but keeps the Narmer Palette, the Old Kingdom sculpture and a very large remaining collection in a crowded nineteenth-century building that feels nothing like the new galleries. Entry is 550 EGP for a foreign adult and it is open 09:00 to 17:00 with the ticket window shutting at 16:00. On a two-day trip, Giza plus the Grand Egyptian Museum is the stronger pairing.

Where are the royal mummies now?

At the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat, not at Giza and not at Tahrir. Twenty-two royal mummies, eighteen kings and four queens, were moved there from Tahrir in the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade on 3 April 2021 and are shown in a dedicated hall. It is a separate journey to a separate part of the city, so allow for it rather than assuming a pyramid day covers mummies.

How much is entry to the Giza pyramids, and what does it include?

General area admission is 700 EGP for a foreign adult and 350 EGP for a student with a valid card. The ministry states this ticket does not cover the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, the Pyramid of Menkaure, the Tomb of Meresankh III or the Workers’ Cemetery, each of which is a separate ticket. The site is listed as open 08:00 to 16:00 and runs on card payment, so carry a card rather than banknotes.