Grand Egyptian Museum: Budget slow travel spot for art history fans

The new Grand Egyptian Museum is spectacular! When you head to Egypt on your budget slow travel world tour in early retirement, make sure you don’t miss this place. It’s an incredible experience at an affordable price.

This post shows you why.

*Art & architecture on display on the Grand Staircase at the new Grand Egyptian Museum near Cairo.*

Grand Egyptian Museum: Budget slow travel spot for art history fans

Compared to the Egyptian Museum built at the turn of the 20th century located in central Cairo, this place is truly astounding.

Seriously. We go to a lot of museums around the world. People joked it took almost as long as the Giza Pyramids to build!

*Left, statue of Pharaoh Hatshepsut (r. 1479-1458 BC), one of most powerful female rulers in ancient Egypt. She is often depicted without much femininity.*
*Right, wooden statue with quartz eyes of Mitri, a governor and priest, from the Fifth Dynasty in Saqqara.*

We got a preview at the soft opening. One of the few things not available during this time frame was the King Tutankhamun exhibit. I realize that is a big draw! But even without the King Tut collection, the Grand Egyptian Museum is extraordinary.

Luckily for us, we saw Tut’s famous funerary mask and two of his three sarcophagi at the old museum, which had not yet been relocated to the new museum. Those last few Tut relics will be moved from the old museum to the new museum before the grand opening in early July 2025. In fact, The Grand Egyptian Museum will close on June 15, 2025, for the final preparations before the grand opening, which will include setting up the last few Tut pieces.

And by the way, there are still many reasons to go see the Egyptian Museum (which doesn’t have the word Grand in the title). Many, many mummies and countless key pieces like funerary masks (other than Tut’s) and other art history relics remain at the old museum.

*Reliefs, sarcophagi, funerary mask, mummies at the old Egyptian Museum.*

Now that it’s more than a century old, the old museum building itself feels historic — almost like you’re on the set of an Indiana Jones movie; perhaps a scene where they’re in an archaeology department before or after a great field adventure.

Compare the main halls in the old museum and the new museum:

Definitely visit both museums – and leave enough time to see it all. Admission to the Egyptian Museum is only $11 (USD) per person.

Details on the Grand Egyptian Museum

General admission at the Grand Egyptian Museum is the equivalent of $25 per person.

To see the world’s largest museum collection dedicated to a single civilization — I feel that was an extremely reasonable price.

*We explored the Grand Egyptian Museum on our own after our introductory group tour with an excellent guide.*

For another $9, we bought an overview tour in a group with about 20 other people. It lasted about 90 minutes. The guide uses headphones, so you can always hear what’s being said. Our guide Dina was excellent.

The new museum is easy to navigate with a map that shows three routes you can take through the galleries. The ‘starred’ pieces have dark blue information tabs on display, and sometimes the starred pieces are on blue stands.

Don’t forget to take in the view of the Giza Pyramids between the Grand Staircase and the main galleries (show in the second picture below).

Top, entrance to the Grand Egyptian Museum.
Middle, view of the Giza Pyramids.
Bottom, Ellen and Theo at Zooba with a view of the Grand Staircase.

When you’re done with it all, there are casual restaurants, coffee shops, and fine dining on site. We took advantage of it and snagged the best seat in the house at the ‘street food’ restaurant Zooba. We had a tasty light dinner with tip included for a reasonable $8. (Shout out to Nacer, our waiter!)

To get more information about the museum’s construction, visit a New York Times article here.

The Grand Egyptian Museum is a reason to come back to Cairo if you’ve already been. I know many visitors say they’ve ‘been there done that’ with the Giza Pyramids, Saqqara, etc. But this world-class museum is worth seeing if you enjoy learning about human civilization through art history.