Giza plateau · Cairo
Everything below is the practical half: how the ticketing actually works, how long you need, what to walk past, and how to get there from wherever you are staying. The awe you can supply yourself.
The plateau sits at the edge of Giza, about 18 km from central Cairo, and the city now runs right up to the fence — the famous shot of pyramids alone in empty desert is taken facing the other way. That surprises people, and it should not put them off. Nothing prepares you for the scale of Khufu from twenty metres away.
What you are looking at
c. 2560 BC · 138 m today, 146 m when finished
The oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world and the only one still standing. It held the record for the tallest structure on earth for about 3,800 years — a record no other building has come close to. Roughly 2.3 million blocks, and the base is level to within a couple of centimetres across 230 metres.
c. 2570 BC · 136 m
The one that looks taller in every photograph, because it sits on higher bedrock. It is also the one that still wears a cap of the original polished limestone casing at the summit — the smooth white skin that once covered all three and made the whole plateau shine.
c. 2510 BC · 65 m
Less than half the height of its neighbours and far more interesting than that makes it sound: the bottom courses are granite hauled from Aswan, 900 km upriver. The gash down the north face is the work of a 12th-century attempt to demolish it, abandoned after eight months of failing to make a dent.
The other one
Seventy-three metres long, twenty high, and carved downward out of a single ridge of limestone rather than built up out of blocks — which is why it sits in a hollow. Most Egyptologists read the face as Khafre's and date it to his reign, alongside the middle pyramid.
The nose has been missing since long before Napoleon's soldiers were blamed for it; a 15th-century account already describes it as gone. The beard came off too, and part of it is in the British Museum.
For the photograph everyone wants — Sphinx in the foreground, pyramid behind — you want the viewing terrace on the eastern side in the morning, with the sun behind you.
Logistics
One ticket gets you onto the plateau. Everything inside anything is extra, bought separately and only on the day — there is no combined pass and no reliable way to buy interiors in advance.
On prices: Egypt revises site entry fees often and without much notice, and any number written on a travel page is out of date within months. We have deliberately not printed one. If you are travelling with us, your guide quotes the current figure before you go and buys the tickets on the day; if you are going alone, budget generously and bring cash.
The plateau opens early — around 7am in winter, an hour earlier in summer — and closes in the late afternoon, earlier during Ramadan. Interiors close before the site does.
Be there at opening. Coaches start arriving around ten, and there is no shade on the site: not by the pyramids, not at the panorama point, not at the Sphinx. Between May and September the difference between arriving at eight and arriving at noon is roughly fifteen degrees.
Getting there
Twenty minutes from Giza, forty-five from downtown, and anything up to two hours if you hit the wrong part of the day. Uber and Careem both work and both are cheaper and less argumentative than a street taxi. Ask for the main entrance rather than the Sphinx entrance unless you specifically want to start at the bottom of the site.
Six to seven hours each way by road. That is the trip most hotels sell, and the arithmetic is unforgiving: fourteen hours out of your day, about three of them at the pyramids. Flying turns the same day trip into something you would willingly repeat — roughly an hour in the air each way, on the plateau before the heat, home for dinner.
Flying is the only sensible option from either. The road distances are long enough that a day trip by car stops being a day trip.
On the ground
None of this is dangerous. It is persistent, and it is the single most common thing visitors complain about afterwards. Knowing the shape of it in advance removes most of the friction.
A headscarf, a scarab, a "gift for your wife". It is not a gift, and the price is negotiated after it is in your hands. A flat "la, shukran" and continuing to walk works.
The classic version: getting on is free and getting down costs €50. Settle the number, in writing on a phone screen if need be, before anyone helps you up.
The men offering their services at the entrance are not licensed Egyptologists. Licensing in Egypt is a real qualification with a real card, and you are entitled to ask to see it.
The passage into the Great Pyramid is 1.2 m high in places, steep, unlit for stretches and hot enough to be genuinely unpleasant in summer. There is nothing to see at the end but an empty granite room. Say no without regret.
Illegal without a permit that tourists do not get, and confiscation at the airport is routine. Leave it at the hotel or leave it at home.
While you are here
The Grand Egyptian Museum — On the Giza plateau itself. The Tutankhamun collection is now shown here, complete, for the first time since it was found.
Saqqara — The Step Pyramid of Djoser — older than Giza, and the building that made Giza thinkable. Thirty minutes south and far quieter.
Dahshur — The Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid: Sneferu's two attempts at getting the angle right, and you can usually walk into the Red one with nobody else inside.
Coptic Cairo — The Hanging Church, Ben Ezra Synagogue and Abu Serga, all within a few hundred metres of each other.
Khan El Khalili — The medieval bazaar. Best after dark, and better with someone who knows which alley leads where.
More on the city itself on the Cairo page.
Planning it