In its efforts to attract tourists back to pyramids, the local authorities are going to update the Giza Plateau, the epicentre of Egypt’s ancient civilization, Al-Monitor reported.
following the updates, the visitors will see the landscape behind the Pyramids, including the vast populated space making up the Pyramids district and the desert hinterland surrounding this millennia-old site.
The construction of the first restaurant has been almost completed at the world-famous plateau, where the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx are located. According to tourism planners, the restaurant will become a part of a major development project in the area.
“The project aims to bring the plateau back to the attention of international tourists,” Ahmed Idriss, a member of the Egyptian parliament’s Committee on Tourism and Civil Aviation, said. “It also aims to protect this precious site.”
In fact, Egypt’s touristic sector really needs to be boosted, it employs over 12% of Egypt’s workforce of 29 million people. Since the Arab Spring, the North African country is losing the tourists from all over the globe. Giza Plateau also lacked essential services making the development project a necessary move. The project started in 2009 and should have been completed in 2012.
But the security and political turmoil that swept through Egypt in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising against longstanding President Hosni Mubarak halted it. Work on the site resumed in 2017.
Giza Plateau: the needed updates almost have done
The project includes the relocation of the entrance to the plateau and ditching the old entrance outside Mena House, a hotel dating back a century and a half that was constructed by Khedive Ismail and hosted a long list of celebrities and even royals.
A new entrance has already been constructed in the desert to ease the entry of tourists. It will also make it easy for tourists to reach the Pyramids in just a few minutes.
In addition, the new museum will replace the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square as the largest gathering place for Egypt’s ancient antiquities.
The Egyptian tourism authorities constructed 18 bazaars inside the Visitors Center that will showcase a wide range of goods with the national character.
There will be a large parking lot outside the Visitors Center in the outer surroundings of the plateau where the buses bringing the tourists to the area can park.
The Egyptian authorities have readily invested over half a billion Egyptian pounds (roughly $31 million), including 150 million pounds (around $9.4 million) before the project’s suspension in 2011, for the development of the Giza Plateau, according to Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled al-Anani.
Constructed over almost 500,000 square meters (123 acres), it will give visitors an interactive experience and function as a bridge between life in today’s Cairo and life in the same city thousands of years ago.
There will be a pedestrian-only space between the Grand Egyptian Museum and the plateau, a 15-minute stroll that takes visitors away from the traffic, the noise and the bustle of Cairo.
