It lies at the western edge of the Nile River delta. Founded in c. Called the "Bride of the Mediterranean" internationally, [ 9 ] Alexandria is a popular tourist destination and an important industrial centre due to its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez. The city extends about 40 km 25 mi along the northern coast of Egypt and is the largest city on the Mediterranean, the second-largest in Egypt after Cairo , the fourth-largest city in the Arab world , the ninth-largest city in Africa , and the ninth-largest urban area in Africa.
The city was founded originally in the vicinity of an Egyptian settlement named Rhacotis that became the Egyptian quarter of the city. Alexandria grew rapidly, becoming a major centre of Hellenic civilisation and replacing Memphis as Egypt's capital during the reign of the Ptolemaic pharaohs who succeeded Alexander.
It retained this status for almost a millennium, through the period of Roman and Eastern Roman rule until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD, when a new capital was founded at Fustat later absorbed into Cairo. Alexandria was the intellectual and cultural centre of the ancient Mediterranean for much of the Hellenistic age and late antiquity. The city was a major centre of early Christianity and was the centre of the Patriarchate of Alexandria , which was one of the major centres of Christianity in the Eastern Roman Empire.
By , the city had already been largely plundered and lost its significance before re-emerging in the modern era. Radiocarbon dating of seashell fragments and lead contamination show human activity at the location during the period of the Old Kingdom 27thβ21st centuries BC and again in the period β BC, followed by the absence of activity after that.
As early as the 7th century BC, there existed important port cities of Canopus and Heracleion. The latter was recently rediscovered underwater. After he captured the Egyptian Satrapy from the Persians , Alexander wanted to build a large Greek city on Egypt's coast that would bear his name. He chose the site of Alexandria, envisioning the building of a causeway to the nearby island of Pharos that would generate two great natural harbours.
