The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), located just 1.2 miles from the Pyramids of Giza, is one of the most ambitious museum projects in history. While the museum’s full opening has been delayed from July 3, 2025, to the fourth quarter of the year, many of its most impressive areas are already open to the public. Currently, visitors can access the Grand Hall, Grand Staircase, 12 Main Galleries, the commercial area, and exterior gardens.
After experiencing a private, sneak-peek tour back in March 2023, we’ve been eagerly anticipating this moment! In addition to the GEM’s main ancient EGYPT galleries, guests can enjoy the fun, unique Children’s Museum, the beautiful outdoor gardens, numerous restaurants and cafes (yes, there is a Starbucks!), as well as shops showcasing leading Egyptian brands.
Of particular note is Zooba restaurant, positioned across the Starbucks beside the main atrium, directly overlooking the main visitor’s entrance. This is a FUN (!) culinary experience with a world-class menu, serving authentic Egyptian street food. We loved our Lynch/Xu family dinner here. Additionally, we must bring attention to the fantastic Grand Egyptian Museum Official Gift Shop. Egyptologists, illustrators, designers, artisans, and creative writers collaborated to create this space, and it shows! The appealing products are both functional and dedicated to preserving and celebrating Egyptian cultural heritage. Among our many global travels, we truly cannot recall a more impressive gift shop.
We completely agree with The Financial Times assessment of GEM:
“As at the Acropolis, there is great poignancy in viewing objects so close to where they were found.”
Overview
The GEM project has been in development for almost three decades. Construction began in the early 2000s and has taken longer to complete than the pyramids themselves! Once fully open, GEM will be the world’s largest archaeological museum, covering 500,000 square meters (872,000 sq ft), making it larger than the British Museum in London and the MET in New York. The museum was designed by Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects and built at a cost of approximately $1 billion.
This is a modern, tech-forward institution, completely focused on the visitor experience. Interactive displays and thoughtful design are built into nearly every part of the site. We feel the GEM sends a political symbol about the power of Egypt: the country is not only capable, but excels in preserving its antiquities in a state-of-the-art display with cutting-edge technology.
GEM Entrance
Visitors begin their experience at the museum’s main entrance, where a unique hanging obelisk is suspended on four columns. Unlike any other monument in Egypt, guests can stand directly beneath it and look up into the interior, which reveals a hidden cartouche of Ramses II, concealed for over 3,500 years. The obelisk itself comes from Tanis, located in the northeast Delta and Egypt’s capital for a brief time in the 21st and 22nd Dynasty during Libyan rule. Many of Ramesses the Great’s monuments from the 19th Dynasty were brought here from his nearby city of Pi-Ramses by these Libyan kings in the 8th and 9th century BCE.
Once inside the atrium, attention is drawn immediately to the colossal statue of King Ramses II. This red granite statue stands over 30 feet tall (roughly 80 feet including its base and setting) and weighs 83 tons. It rises across three floors from a triangular water feature and represents Ramses II arm-in-arm with gods such as Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of war and healing. This imposing statue was moved to GEM in 2006 from outside Cairo’s central railway station, during the 30-year rule of former president Hosni Mubarak, who originally conceived the museum in 1992.
The Grand Staircase and Main Galleries
The Grand Hall, open at both ends for natural airflow, serves as a gathering space and orientation area for visitors before exploring the galleries. Shaped with triangular portals and framed by hieroglyphics, the translucent facades allow light and glow gold at sunset – a truly beautiful site!
Climbing the Grand Staircase, visitors pass through a vertical gallery featuring 55 artifacts that illustrate the power of Egypt’s kings through iconography, sculpture, and inscriptions. This is a rare statue collection of famous pharaohs, including that of King Senusret I, amongst 55 artifacts that depict the “journey towards eternity”, along with other artistic depictions of pharaonic authority.
At the top, guests reach the main exhibition area: 12 galleries now open to the public. These are laid out chronologically, divided into four historical periods and tied together by three central themes: society, kingship, and religious belief. This organization allows visitors to trace the development of ancient Egypt from prehistoric settlements along the Nile to the influence of the Graeco-Roman period.
From the stone tools and pottery of the earliest human settlements along the Nile to the artifacts of the Graeco-Roman era, the exhibits highlight the evolution of one of the world’s most remarkable civilizations.
Tutankhamun and the Conservation Center
One of the most anticipated features of the museum is the full collection of items from the tomb of King Tutankhamun. For the first time, more than 5,600 artifacts are housed together in a single location occupying one of the museum’s corners, providing a complete view of the young king’s burial and the art and culture of the time.
In total, the museum’s conservation center has preserved more than 57,000 artifacts, many of which had never been exhibited publicly before. Most recently, two wooden solar barques (which was intended to ferry the royal dead to the afterlife) have been moved to a separate GEM building! Described by the general director of conservation programs as the “biggest and oldest artifacts on earth”, we are excited that visitors can now watch one of the wooden barques be reassembled by conservators from 1,650 pieces.
We must acknowledge the amazing work of the 120 (majority female!) conservators and 90 curators who have worked so meticulously to bring this remarkable museum to life. This facility is one of the largest of its kind (!), an extraordinary feat that is truly awe-inspiring.
More on Egypt from Kipling & Clark
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