In just a few hours from now, Cairo will unveil its long-awaited masterpiece. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) — a billion-dollar temple to antiquity — is set to open with great fanfare on the edge of the Giza Plateau, in full view of the world’s oldest wonder.
After two decades of planning, delays, and anticipation, this monumental museum finally takes its place in history. The inauguration is expected to draw 79 international delegations, including 39 heads of state and government, from nations such as Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Spain, and Denmark.
In recent nights, shafts of golden light have danced across the pyramids and the museum’s vast glass façade — a modern symphony heralding Egypt’s most ambitious cultural moment.
A Monument Beside Monuments
Set just beyond the shadow of the Great Pyramids, the Grand Egyptian Museum stretches across nearly half a million square metres, making it the world’s largest museum devoted to a single civilization. Built with major financial and technical support from Japan, the facility houses over 100,000 artifacts, of which 50,000 will be on display, while the rest are preserved in advanced conservation and research wings.
From prehistoric relics to Ptolemaic treasures, the museum spans more than 3,000 years of history. Its galleries are organized into three sweeping themes — Society, Royalty, and Beliefs — divided across four chronological eras from Prehistory to the Greco-Roman period. Every detail has been designed to immerse visitors in a seamless journey through Egypt’s vast and layered past.
The Odyssey of Ramses II
The museum’s story begins, fittingly, with its most iconic resident. The colossal statue of Ramses II, now greeting visitors in the grand atrium, stands 11 meters tall and weighs 83 tons. Draped in soft light filtering through the glass roof 38 meters above, the granite pharaoh finally found his eternal home — though not without a journey as epic as the civilization he represents.
Discovered in 1820 at Memphis, Egypt’s ancient capital, the statue was installed in downtown Cairo in 1955 by President Gamal Abdel Nasser as a gift to the people. When the idea for the new museum took shape in the early 2000s, the decision was made to move the monument once more — this time to Giza. One night in 2006, during the era of Hosni Mubarak, the massive statue was strapped into an iron crate and towed through Cairo’s streets as tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered to bid it farewell — a poignant moment that foreshadowed the revolution to come in 2011.
Today, Ramses II stands sentinel once again, commanding the entrance of the GEM. So imposing is his presence that visitors, craning upward in awe, have been known to stumble into the shallow, crocodile-free reflecting pool at his feet — prompting the stationing of a dedicated guard to prevent accidental baptisms by antiquity.
Design, Drama, and Detail
Designed by Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects, the museum’s structure is a masterclass in contemporary monumentalism. Its triangular glass façade mirrors the geometry of the pyramids, creating a dialogue between the ancient and the modern.
From Ramses’s atrium, a grand six-story staircase leads upward through a procession of statues — kings, queens, gods, and mythic figures — culminating in a panoramic window framing the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, less than two kilometers away. Each level unfolds a new chapter in Egypt’s narrative, combining architectural restraint with emotional grandeur.
The museum’s scale is staggering: 12 main galleries, 24,000 square metres of exhibition space, a children’s museum, conference halls, and a cutting-edge conservation center. Beneath the galleries lie vast storage vaults and laboratories, funded in part by the global Tutankhamun exhibition tour of 2005, where thousands of delicate artifacts are studied and preserved.
Tutankhamun Reunited
For the first time since Howard Carter’s discovery in 1922, the complete Tutankhamun collection — more than 5,000 artifacts — is presented together. Among them: the boy king’s golden throne, chariots, funeral beds, and his legendary burial mask of gold, quartzite, lapis lazuli, and glass, meticulously restored after a 2014 mishap.
Another centerpiece, the 4,600-year-old solar boat of King Khufu, has also found a new home here — transported in 2021 by a remote-controlled Belgian vehicle, the 43-meter cedar vessel now displayed in all its preserved glory.
History in a New Light
The GEM isn’t just about preservation — it’s about reinvention. Interactive installations, mixed-reality storytelling, and immersive projections reinterpret Egypt’s history for a new generation.
“We’re speaking the language Gen Z understands,” says Ahmed Ghoneim, the museum’s CEO. “It’s history — but experienced, not just observed.”
Tourism and Tomorrow
For Egypt, GEM represents more than a museum — it’s a statement of renewal. After years of political turbulence and pandemic slowdowns, the nation welcomed 15.7 million visitors in 2024, with plans to double that figure by 2032. The area surrounding the museum has been transformed: new roads, a soon-to-open metro station, and the Sphinx International Airport just 40 minutes away.
According to Hassan Allam, CEO of Hassan Allam Holding, which operates the museum, GEM expects 15,000 to 20,000 visitors daily. As the lights rise over Giza and the doors finally open, Egypt isn’t just showcasing its past — it’s reclaiming its place at the center of the world’s cultural map.
