4–5 hours
LuxorNew
Karnak and Luxor Temple: Luxor's East Bank
From
$29.40
per person
6+ people · Private car + guide
Luxor Temple
A single coherent processional temple in the middle of the modern city, best seen floodlit.
About
Unlike Karnak's accretion of precincts, Luxor Temple reads as one design: Ramses II's pylon with its seated colossi and single surviving obelisk, then a peristyle court, the great colonnade of Amenhotep III with its fourteen 19-metre papyrus columns, and finally the sanctuary.
Inside the complex sits the Abu Haggag Mosque, built when the temple was buried to its shoulders in sand and now suspended halfway up a wall — a visible cross-section of 3,000 years. The recently reopened Avenue of Sphinxes runs 2.7 kilometres from here to Karnak.
History
Built mainly by Amenhotep III and Ramses II around 1400–1250 BC, dedicated to the Opet festival. Alexander the Great rebuilt the sanctuary and had himself depicted as a pharaoh in it. The matching obelisk stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Where it is
Nearby
Book it
Tours visiting Luxor Temple
Book
10 hours
LuxorNew
All of Luxor in One Day: East and West Banks with Lunch
From
$86.10
per person
6+ people · Private car + guide + entry fees