closing thought on Alexandria

But I certainly had no problem daydreaming just now, when rereading Gibbon’s fine paragraph on Alexandria.

I love it up there as is, in its current state. But if I could change the condition of any city in the world, I would like to see an Alexandria today as well-preserved as Venice, Florence, or Prague. (I realize that it would be a longer haul in years from Alex’s heyday compared with the three other cities just mentioned.)

The “fifteen miles in circumference” line is what got me, because it reminds me that even the ancient city was by no means small. When you leave the train station in Alexandria, a quick right turn (passing the ruins of a Roman amphitheater) gives you maybe a 10-minute walk to the sea. And right there on the harbor is apparently where all of the main attractions were, including the royal facilities, the library, and the lighthouse on what was then an island not far off shore.

But if you head straight out of the train station and angle back to the left, you eventually come upon another field of Roman ruins, as well as the catacombs. (One part is labelled as the area where the bones of the victims of Caracalla were housed. Caracalla was the son of Septimius Severus, and a far more brutal emperor than his father. He ordered a general massacre of Alexandria at one point, just because he didn’t like the people there.)

It might be a half hour or slightly more to walk form the catacombs to the area where the library would have been, and I can sort of imagine a 15-mile perimeter of walls around the whole area.

It’s nice enough to be up in Alex and breathe that fresh sea air and observe the beautiful, chalky colors. But it’s often strange to think you are standing on perhaps the exact block that was the intellectual center of the world 2,000 years ago, because –it’s true– there’s not much trace of it remaining. And that’s why some people are disappointed by the city. For me, the air and sea plus the imagination is enough to make it a highly dramatic experience.