Customer Reviews

Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City, 1860-1960

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...having lived there many years ago, these pictures bring back fond memories. Today, visiting Alexandria, you would not recognize most of the buildings and streets.

This book, Vintage Alexandria, is not only for those who have known the town but also for others who have read about it and can get a feel of how things were.....

Vintage photos arranged chronologically impart the "vibrant, stylish, and cosmopolitan city" similar to Athens, Naples, and Marseilles for its importance in Mediterranean commerce and culture and its mixed population. About half of the more than 150 photographs show groups of Italians, Greeks, Jews and other immigrants who along with native Egyptians pursued business opportunities and a lively social life in the Egyptian city founded in ancient times. The settings of the groups as well as the many scenes from different parts of the city display the city's architecture, public areas, and rooms inside buildings. Much of the city is modernized by the time of the photographs of this volume. Palm trees, mosques, Islamic features even on new buildings, and the clothing of individuals mark the city as North African and Middle Eastern.

Alexandria was renowned from ancient times. Its famed library and Pharos lighthouse in its Eastern Harbor have become permanent symbols of the achievements of the ancient world. Alexander the Great gave his name to the city after laying out a new design for it. Alexandria's mystique was enhanced further by the writings of Constantine Cavafy, E. M. Forster, and Lawrence Durrell.

As three maps show, Alexandria was prominent literally as well as by legend and repute. Three maps show how the part of the city reaching into the sea splits to form two harbors--Western and Eastern. Names of sites and areas in the maps exemplify Alexandria's millennial history and its modern-day cosmopolitan population and its interests.

I find these photos specially nostalgic of a city, still very beautiful, but which must have been splendid at the time they were taken

VERY GOOD WORK . SHOWS A SPECIAL BOND OF THE WRITER WITH THE TOWN.
NEVERTHELSS I WOULD PREFER TO GIVE MORE PHOTOS AND MENTION THE GREEK COMMUNITY SCHOOLS WHICH WERE MORE THAN THE REST EUROPEAN SCHOOLS . THE GREEK COMMUNITY WAS 100.000 MEMBERS VERY ACTIVE AND PROSPEROUS.