Overview
The temple was never abandoned: a Roman legionary camp enclosed it, a church was built inside, and the thirteenth-century mosque of Abu Haggag still stands on top of the buried courtyard, its door now high above the excavated floor. One of the pair of obelisks at the entrance has been in the Place de la Concorde in Paris since 1836.
Highlights
Come after dark — the floodlighting is the best in Egypt and the temple is open until nine. The mosque perched mid-air over the court is the clearest illustration anywhere of Egypt’s layered occupation. The reopened sphinx avenue walks to Karnak in about forty minutes.