Wex Major 98 · File:Cruising the Nile at Luxor.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cruising_the_Nile_at_Luxor.jpg
Luxor
A working Egyptian town of a few hundred thousand people that happens to have the largest religious building ever constructed at one end of it and sixty royal tombs across the river.
Luxor
Luxor is built directly on top of Thebes, which was the capital of Egypt for most of the New Kingdom, and the result is a town where the ancient and the ordinary are not separated by a fence. Luxor Temple stands in the middle of the shops. The corniche runs past cruise boats moored four deep. Three kilometres north, Karnak covers an area that would swallow several cathedrals. And across the water — twenty minutes and a completely different landscape — the cultivation stops dead against desert hills with more than sixty royal tombs cut into them. The town itself is small, walkable along the river, and much quieter in the evening than its reputation suggests. What it asks of you is an early start on one day and a late finish on another.
Explore Luxor on the map
City locations, drawn from our published destination data. Attractions, hotels and restaurants are not mapped yet.
The unmissable Luxor
What to do in Luxor
Two banks, two rhythms. Everything below is reachable inside a day of the corniche, and almost nothing here needs more than half of one.
The east bank
- Karnak — the Precinct of Amun-Re, its hypostyle hall of a hundred and thirty-four columns, the sacred lake and the standing obelisk of Hatshepsut. An afternoon, not an hour.
- Luxor Temple in the town centre, at its best after dark when it is floodlit and the medieval mosque built into one corner of it is lit from below.
- The Luxor Museum — small, superbly lit and beautifully arranged, and the antidote to temple fatigue. It is open into the evening.
- The avenue of sphinxes, re-excavated between the two temples, which can be walked in the cool at the end of the day.
The west bank
- The Valley of the Kings at first light — three tombs on the standard ticket, with Seti I and Tutankhamun ticketed separately.
- Deir el-Bahari, Hatshepsut’s temple rising in three terraces out of the cliff, best in the first two hours of the day before the rock throws the heat back at you.
- Medinet Habu, which has the best-preserved colour in Thebes and a fraction of the visitors, and the Ramesseum with its fallen colossus.
- Deir el-Medina — the village where the tomb-cutters lived, with their own small, exquisitely painted tombs on the slope above it.
Off the standard route
- The Colossi of Memnon, standing alone in a field on the road in, which take five minutes and are almost always the first thing anyone photographs.
- A dawn balloon flight over the west bank, weather permitting — it is cancelled for wind without notice and is worth building flexibly into the days.
- The east-bank souq behind the corniche in the evening, which is a market for the town rather than for visitors once you are a street or two in.
- Esna, about an hour south, where the temple of Khnum sits nine metres below the modern street with its ceiling paintings recently cleaned.
Who Luxor suits
- Anyone who wants the ancient world at full scale rather than in a museum case — this is the densest concentration of it anywhere.
- Travellers happy to start a day at six and stop at eleven. Luxor punishes late risers between May and September and rewards early ones all year.
- Nile cruise passengers, for whom Luxor is the usual boarding or landing point and who should add a night on land at that end.
- Families with older children, who take to the tombs. It is a harder sell with under-eights: there is a lot of standing in the sun and very little to touch.
How long in Luxor
Arrive · Karnak · Luxor Temple lit
Fly or train in, settle, and give the afternoon to Karnak. Luxor Temple after dark on the way back. No early start on a travel day.
The west bank
Across at first light. Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Bahari and one of Medinet Habu, the Ramesseum or Deir el-Medina, back over the water by early afternoon.
The second west-bank day
The tombs of the nobles and Deir el-Medina, or a dawn balloon and a slow morning, or Esna an hour south. The Luxor Museum in the late afternoon.
South
Board a cruise for Aswan over three or four nights via Edfu and Kom Ombo, or fly on and keep the nights on land.
Getting around Luxor
A small town, a short river crossing and one long road south. Nothing here is far; the heat decides the timetable.
Arriving and leaving
- Luxor International (LXR) is a few kilometres east of the town — about fifteen minutes — and takes hourly-ish domestic flights from Cairo plus seasonal international services.
- The overnight sleeper train from Cairo arrives in the morning at a station in the middle of town. It is booked well ahead and it saves a hotel night rather than time.
- Cruise boats moor along the corniche in the centre. If you are joining one, you are already where you need to be.
Crossing to the west bank
- The public ferry runs constantly from the corniche, takes a few minutes and costs almost nothing. It is what the town uses.
- A car and driver for the west-bank day is the normal arrangement — the sites are spread over several kilometres of desert with no shade between them.
- The road bridge is some kilometres south of the town, so a car crossing is a detour of twenty minutes or so each way. Most drivers take the vehicle ferry instead.
In the town
- The corniche is walkable end to end and the walk between Luxor Temple and the museum is pleasant in the evening.
- Caleches work the corniche. Look at the horse before you get in; condition varies a great deal and it is entirely reasonable to walk away.
- Taxi fares are agreed before you set off. Your travel designer arranges the transfers and site cars, which removes almost all of this.
What to know before you come
Three things Luxor does differently from the rest of Egypt, and all three change how a day is planned.
Every site, hotel and driver works in English, and a licensed Egyptologist guide — which is a formal qualification here, not a self-description — makes an enormous difference at Karnak and in the tombs. The difference between a guided and an unguided Valley of the Kings is the difference between rock and a story.
Not danger, but pressure. Caleche drivers, felucca captains and stallholders along the corniche are relentless and a firm, friendly, repeated no is the skill to develop early. It is markedly less intense inside the ticketed sites than outside them, and arranging transport in advance removes most of it.
Luxor is one of the hottest inhabited places in Egypt, above forty degrees through the summer with almost no humidity and no rain. Outdoor sites are done before nine and after four in those months; between October and April the whole day is usable. The tombs are hot inside, not cool.
Where to base yourself
Three broad choices, and the river is the thing that separates them. Live Traveller does not publish hotel names or prices — this is about which part of town to sleep in.
The east-bank corniche
- The default, and right for a first visit. You are walking distance from Luxor Temple, the museum, the souq and the ferry, and the river is out of the window.
- It is also where the cruise boats moor, so the view can include four decks of somebody else’s hotel. Rooms facing the water are worth asking about specifically.
- Everything on the west bank is a morning crossing away, and the drive to the airport is ten to fifteen minutes.
The west bank
- Quieter, greener and much closer to the tombs, set among cultivation and small villages rather than in a town.
- It suits second visits, longer stays and anyone who would rather have a courtyard than a corniche. It does not suit a two-night trip with an early flight.
- The trade is dinner: the choice is narrower and the ferry does not run at every hour you might want it to.
On the water
- A cruise boat between Luxor and Aswan is a room that moves, and it removes the packing between Edfu and Kom Ombo entirely.
- The catch is time in port. Cruise programmes give Luxor an afternoon and a morning, which is not enough for both banks — a night on land at the Luxor end fixes it.
- A dahabiya is the smaller, slower, sailing version of the same idea, with a handful of cabins and a schedule set by the wind rather than the clock.
Where to photograph Luxor
The light does most of the work here, and it only does it twice a day.
First light
- The Valley of the Kings as the sun comes over the ridge — the rock goes from grey to gold in about ten minutes and the valley is nearly empty.
- Deir el-Bahari from the approach causeway, with the cliff behind it still in shadow and the terraces already lit.
- The east bank from a balloon, if the wind allows, with the cultivation, the desert edge and the river all in one frame.
After dark
- Luxor Temple floodlit, from the street outside the enclosure as well as from inside — the mosque above the columns is the shot nobody expects.
- The corniche with the cruise boats lit, from the river wall rather than from a boat.
- Karnak’s sound-and-light programme, where it is running, which lights the hypostyle hall in a way daylight never does.
Practicalities
- Photography rules differ by site and by tomb and they change; some tombs require a separate photography ticket and some prohibit cameras entirely. Ask at the ticket office rather than at the door.
- Tripods are generally not permitted inside the enclosures. A fast lens matters more than a tripod in the tombs, where the light is low and warm.
- Ask before photographing people, on both banks. The west-bank villages are somebody’s home, not part of the site.
Where next
Luxor is the middle of an Egyptian itinerary rather than the end of one. Everything below is a normal onward leg.
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