The Pyramids of Giza: The Geometry of Time

Date of visit: August 2025

My rating: 10/10

Visit duration: 6 hours

There is a moment, just before dawn, when the Giza plateau still seems suspended between night and myth. The air is still, the desert wind has receded, and the shadows of the pyramids blend with the indistinct houses of Al-Haram, a Cairo neighborhood that now laps the necropolis like a sea of concrete. From afar, the profile of the Great Pyramid appears like a geometric abstraction, an ideal figure rather than a human artifact. As we approach, however, the perfection breaks: the limestone blocks, corroded by sun and time, reveal cracks, restorations, and fractures. The mathematical order of myth is broken in the material, and stone becomes stone again.

It's time to delve into the Giza plateau, for a face-to-face encounter with history, with one of the archetypal works of humankind, with places and images that are rooted in the imagination of every living man; and a post about the pyramids requires treating the subject with due devotion.

I. The historical context of the pyramids of Giza: the birth of an idea of eternity

The pyramids of Giza date back to the heart of the Old Kingdom, between the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, around 2550-2450 BC. They are the culmination of a long architectural evolution, which began over a century earlier with the mastabas of Saqqara and the Step Pyramid of Djoser, attributed to the architect Imhotep. The idea that a ruler could have a stairway to heaven built was not merely symbolic: it represented a true ontology of power. The pharaoh, for the Egyptians, never truly died; he simply passed from one form to another, from human to divine. Architecture had to accompany this transition.

When Khufu (Cheops, according to Greek tradition) decided to build the largest pyramid ever constructed, he wasn't just planning a tomb. He was codifying, in stone, the idea of immortality as a political act. The Great Pyramid, originally 146.6 meters high, with a base 230 meters on each side and over two million stone blocks, was a cosmological declaration: the world itself, ordered according to perfect proportions, would enshrine the body and name of the ruler for eternity.

The subsequent order, with the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, represented a sort of controlled echo, a smaller replica that perfected but did not surpass the archetype. It is as if the dynasty, having reached its pinnacle, had already glimpsed the limit: nothing greater than eternity can be built.

Some basic information is necessary to visit the pyramids. First, the dating: although the exact age of the pyramids is still controversial, it is currently believed they were built around 2500 BC. It's difficult to convey in words the scale of the timeline separating us from the Pyramids; these structures were already extremely ancient at the time of names that commonly identify Ancient Egypt, such as Tutankhamun or Cleopatra. I believe that images can convey the scale of the timeline separating us from the Pyramids better than any words (click to enlarge):

And no, before anyone asks: just because the pyramids predate the extinction of the mammoths by 1,000 years doesn't mean they're older than the dinosaurs.

If you're not already sufficiently amazed by this point, I feel compelled to play another ace; because the timeline I just posted above can be misleading, representing the pyramids of Giza at the beginning of an endless span of time that extends back to the origins of civilization. Well, the pyramids of Giza are not the primordial work of Egyptian civilization, the starting point of a remote time span, but rather the culmination, the technological pinnacle of the development of a construction technique that has even more ancient precursors, such as the Dahshur complex, where the pyramid-building technique was perfected, incurring errors, failures, and corrections, which finally led to the mastery displayed at Giza.

Another aspect I believe needs to be clarified is that the pyramids as they appear today are very different from the structures they were originally built. When faced with extremely ancient artifacts, it's always appropriate to ask how time has influenced their current appearance. Just as when interpreting the Augustus of Prima Porta, it's important to remember that it was a polychrome work, or when contemplating the famous "Pompeian red" decorating the houses of Pompeii, it's important to remember that it was actually a faded yellow whose hue was altered by the heat of the eruption of Vesuvius, when visiting the pyramids, it's always appropriate to understand that what we see today is the skeleton, battered by the ravages of time, of structures that were built very differently by the Egyptians five millennia ago. What we see today, in fact, are the bare buildings, stripped of their cladding; originally, the pyramids must have had a strong symbolic meaning, which I'll discuss later, in which color played a key role. The pyramids, in fact, were originally covered in white limestone, meticulously polished and assembled to make perfect and dazzling (as Herodotus literally describes them) polyhedrons of unprecedented proportions; part of this covering, destroyed by time and events, is still visible at the top of the Pyramid of Khafre, which probably also had a golden "hat," or pyramidion, at the top; at the time of their construction they must therefore have appeared more or less like this (the image is not very truthful, since it seems that only Khafre's pyramid had the golden pyramidion at the top, and it is certain that the pyramid of Menkaure had, as it still does, a red granite base, but I have better things to do than argue too long with ChatGPT):

One final caveat is to clear your mind of preconceptions and acquired notions: the image of the pyramids is so ingrained in the global imagination that it has become a cliché; when visiting Giza, it's necessary to clear your iconographic memory, rediscover your sense of wonder and marvel at the thought that yes, 5,000 years ago, an entire population dedicated itself entirely to the construction of colossal polyhedrons in the middle of the desert.

II. Construction hypotheses: between engineering and faith

For centuries, scholars—and improvisers—have pondered how the Egyptians were able to achieve such a feat with seemingly primitive means. The question is not only technical, but also anthropological: to what extent can we accept that a people 4,500 years ago possessed knowledge capable of defying time, when we, with all our technology, would perhaps be unable to replicate it with the same precision?

At this point, I believe it's necessary to dwell on what makes the pyramids of Giza truly exceptional, to the point of raising so many questions and provoking such hesitation among scholars. As I've already said, the pyramids represent the technological pinnacle of an extremely complex technique that had already taken a long time to perfect 5,000 years ago. At Dahshur, there's an older complex that served as a training ground for the more famous pyramids of Giza. The great pyramid of Dahshur was plagued by a series of collapses that forced constant modifications to the design. Contrary to what one might think, building a pyramid requires more than simply stacking countless layers of colossal stones, as the structure would collapse under its own weight. Furthermore, and perhaps more obviously, the underlying soil must also be chosen to support the immense weight of the structure. Toby Wilkinson, in Ancient Egypt, recounts the epic story of the construction of the pyramid of Dahshur:

As construction of the Great Pyramid of Dahshur neared completion, the site's geological characteristics abruptly intervened: cracks began to form in the outer casing, an unmistakable sign of ground subsidence. The underlying sand and shale were simply not solid enough to support the pyramid's enormous weight, and the ground had begun to give way. As an emergency measure, additional stone blocks were placed around the pyramid's base, reducing the inclination to 44°, but it was too little, too late. Further cracks began to appear in the corridors and interior rooms, which the architects attempted to repair with every means possible, including stucco repairs and even new stone cladding. Expensive imported beams were also used to prop up the ceilings (the Palermo Stone reports the arrival of forty shiploads of coniferous wood from Kebny), but it was all to no avail. Finally, in a desperate attempt to save the pyramid, and their careers, from complete ruin, the architects decided to radically change the design. The inclination angle of the upper half of the structure was further reduced to 43°, and smaller stone blocks were used, arranged in horizontal courses rather than sloping inwards as previously, thus unintentionally contributing to increased stress and tension at the base.

Well, while the inclination of the Dahshur pyramid had to be revised during construction and flattened, thus significantly simplifying the elevation of the structure, in the three pyramids of Giza the inclination is repeatedly, with minimal deviations between the three pyramids, 51°. I will immediately return to this value, which may be insignificant to most, but first of all I would like to invite reflection on the ability the Egyptians achieved to repeatedly erect works of such structural complexity with such mathematical precision. Let us now turn to the number 51 (in degrees); why is this value special? A 51° inclination is equivalent to a geometric ratio of 14/11, that is, for every 11 base units, the height increases by 14; this ratio corresponds almost exactly to the ratio π/2, which means that the pyramid of Cheops in particular, the one that comes closest to these values, is a possible symbolic representation of the circle inscribed in the square. It is difficult to believe that such significant mathematical values are due to chance.

But it doesn't end there. In the pyramids of Giza, it's not just the mathematical precision with which they were built that amazes. The Great Pyramid of Cheops, in fact, is oriented towards true north with an accuracy of about 1/15–1/20 of a degree (≈ 0.05°), a level of precision that is astonishing even by modern instruments. If you're wondering, as I did, whether true north remains unchanged over time, or whether it's just a coincidence that the pyramid's alignment today coincides so perfectly with north, well, no, it's not true north that varies over the millennia due to the precession of the Earth's axis, but celestial north (in other words, when the pyramids were built, it wasn't the Pole Star that indicated north, which was instead located between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor); geographic north remains substantially fixed, except for infinitesimal variations, and the pyramid of Cheops has been aligned with a precision that leaves one speechless.

Let's now look at some rough numbers to try to understand the monumentality of the work. The Great Pyramid of Cheops is made of 2,300,000 stone blocks, each weighing on average more than a ton, and covers a surface area of over five hectares. A simple calculation shows that during the twenty years of Cheops's reign (2545–2525), the builders would have had to place a stone block in place every two minutes, working ten hours a day, year-round. The sides of the Great Pyramid are each 230 meters long, with a deviation of just a few centimeters. Try to imagine having to precisely place a single one-ton stone block; now imagine having to align a second one with the first; and then imagine having to build an entire square 230 meters on each side in this way, and once the work was finished, only the first level would have been completed; The pyramid of Cheops has 203 superimposed "layers" (technically "courses") (of gradually decreasing height) and it goes without saying that each new level involves the increasing difficulty of raising the ashlars to ever greater heights.

How was it possible, then, to create these works almost 5000 years ago?

The main academic hypotheses fall into two broad schools: the external ramp and the internal ramp. The first, traditional theory envisions a progressive ramp of earth and debris that enveloped the pyramid as it grew, allowing the blocks to be hauled to the top with sleds and ropes. However, the quantity of material required, and the space required for such a system, make this hypothesis logistically almost untenable. The second theory, advanced by French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin, instead envisions an internal spiral ramp, carved into the structure itself, which would have allowed the blocks to be lifted from the inside, reducing time and waste. Some investigations with thermal scanners and radar have identified anomalies compatible with this interpretation, but nothing conclusive.

Other models—more marginal, but not without their charm—evoke hydraulic counterweight systems, sand-filled inclined planes, or the use of natural lubricants to reduce friction. And, of course, there's no shortage of pseudo-archaeological literature: aliens, unknown energies, lost civilizations. But even these improbable theories, in their excess, testify to the same thing: the difficulty of accepting that the pure, organized will of a human society could have conceived such a balance of ingenuity and faith.

This is a good place to insert, for indexing purposes only, the phrase "the pyramids were built by aliens," just to attract a bit of illiterate traffic.

Without taking anything away from the charm of the work, but just to silence the lunatics of alien theories, Toby Wilkinson, in the aforementioned Ancient Egypt, illustrates the construction technique as follows (as if to say that what appears impossible could, in fact, be achieved with ingenuity and a lot of sacrifice):

Once the site was prepared, clearing and leveling the ground (probably by digging channels into the rock that were then filled with water to ensure there were no slopes), it was time to begin the actual construction. Today, the scale of the project may seem insurmountable, but to Cheops's governing body, which boasted a generation's experience in building great pyramids, the undertaking must have seemed less daunting. The ancient Egyptians approached any large-scale project by breaking it down into a series of more manageable elements, and in the case of pyramid construction and workforce organization, this approach was efficient and effective. The basic unit of labor likely consisted of brigades of twenty men, each with its own leader. This created an immediate team spirit and a sense of friendly rivalry between the different work crews, who were encouraged to try to outdo one another. The same mechanism was followed with larger units, as we know from epigraphic evidence: ten brigades formed a division of two hundred men, known today by the Greek term phyle; five phylai, each with its own leader and a precise sense of identity, formed a unit of a thousand workers. Two re-departments, always with their own precise identity and often humorous names (for example, "the king's drunkards"), in turn formed a squad, which represented the largest unit. (...) Dragging the enormous stone blocks from the quarry to the construction site was a backbreaking task; each block, weighing a ton or more, had to be lifted by levers onto a sort of wooden sled, which was then pulled with ropes along a carefully prepared ramp; once it reached its destination, the block had to be unloaded from the sled and carefully moved to the place where it would be perfectly squared and finished. And all this at a rate of one block every two minutes, for ten hours a day. (...) Despite its superhuman dimensions, the monument of Cheops nevertheless represented a profoundly human achievement, and certainly within the capabilities of the ancient Egyptians. With calculations and practical experiments, it has been demonstrated that just two teams, or four thousand men, would have been enough to quarry, haul, and put in place the more than two million stone blocks that make up the pyramid. An equal workforce would likely have been needed to build and maintain the long ramps leading from the quarry to the pyramid and then up the four faces of the ever-rising monument. Another army of workers toiled behind the scenes to ensure the entire project proceeded without interruption: carpenters who built the sleds that hauled the great blocks; water carriers who lubricated the wooden and mud ramps over which the sleds passed; master potters who crafted the large jars for the water carriers and the pottery needed daily to provide food; blacksmiths for the chisels; bakers, brewers, and cooks for the provisions. In total, however, the workforce may not have exceeded 10,000.

III. Matter and Number: The Pyramid as Geometric Theology

The Great Pyramid of Cheops is not just a pile of stones; it is a conceptual machine. As just mentioned, the ratio between the height and the base's half-side is equal to π/2, a proportion that produces a slope of approximately 51°50', nearly identical for all great pyramids. Whether this relationship is the result of mathematical awareness or empirical necessity is still a matter of debate, but the suggestion remains: the pyramid as the embodiment of number, as a bridge between measure and the divine.

In Egyptian symbolism, the pyramid shape represents the sun's rays descending toward the earth. The triangular surfaces converge at the apex like the sun's rays returning to the heavens, evoking the journey of the pharaoh's soul. The Pyramid Texts—engraved centuries later, but already present in oral form—speak of the king who "ascends into the sky like a falcon, who sits on the throne of Ra and commands the gods." Stone, therefore, was not inert. Each block represented a part of the cosmic order, a piece of Maat, the goddess of truth and universal harmony.

Egyptian architecture conceived of space not as something to be inhabited, but rather traversed. The heart of the pyramid, with its chambers and sloping corridors, was not intended for the living: it was a map to the afterlife. The so-called "king's chamber," with its red granite sarcophagus, is located at the exact center of the mass, at a height corresponding to a third of the pyramid. Everything is proportioned as in a theorem, yet everything is charged with a silent pathos. Entering that bare and claustrophobic chamber today is like finding oneself in a stone brain: a structure that contemplates eternity.

IV. Work and Myth: The Invisible People

For centuries, it was believed that the pyramids were built by slaves, an image entrenched in Western culture since the time of Herodotus and later reaffirmed in the Bible. But excavations conducted at the end of the 20th century overturned this view. The pyramids were built by specialized workers, organized into permanent teams, well-fed and housed in special villages, not by masses of slaves bent under the whip.

Remains of bread, beef and fish bones, and graffiti with the names of the teams (" Cheops' Friends," " Chephren's Beer Drinkers ") reveal an almost collective dimension, a sort of state-run construction site ante litteram, where the construction of the monument was also a social ritual. Work as a form of worship: building for the god-king meant participating in the creation of the universe. It was, therefore, a society that had internalized the sense of duration as a political principle. Time was not a line, but a structure: something that could be built.

V. The decline of the myth: sand and cement

Today, Giza is no longer an isolated plateau in the desert, but a strip of city besieged by Cairo's urban sprawl. Traffic reaches almost to the site's fence, and camel drivers offer "traditional" rides in front of tour buses. The smell of gasoline mingles with that of dates and hot sand. The distance between the sacred and the profane has dissolved: the pyramids now exist in a short circuit of time, where the ancient and the banal touch without ever merging.

Visiting Giza today means confronting this dissonance. The main entrance, with its security checkpoints and ticket booths, leads into a place that oscillates between a museum and an amusement park.

VI. the Sphinx

The Sphinx of Giza is one of those presences that the contemporary eye has come to consider familiar—almost a logo of Egyptian civilization—and for this very reason, it no longer truly sees it. Yet, if one regards it with the calm it deserves, what emerges is not a benevolent symbol of wisdom but a disturbing, almost monstrous figure, whose age-old immobility is a form of threat. Half lion, half man, the Sphinx belongs to no natural order: it is the negation of movement and speech, a body frozen in stone that stares at the horizon as if guarding its boundary.

The work, carved directly into the limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau, measures 73 meters long by 20 meters high and is oriented towards the east, where the sun rises. Most Egyptologists attribute it to the reign of Khafre (c. 2520–2494 BC), since the face—albeit eroded—presents features similar to the ruler's statuary portraits and because its position aligns perfectly with the axis of his funerary complex. However, this identification has never been universally accepted: other scholars have hypothesized that it may date back to Cheops, Khafre's father, or to an even earlier phase, inherited and reused by his successors.

The idea of a "prehistoric" Sphinx has been revived, with more speculative tones, by other scholars still, who believe that the deep grooves on the statue's body were not caused by wind but by erosion caused by torrential rains, thus predating 2500 BC—a theory that would imply a dating of over 7,000 years. The official scientific community, however, believes that these fractures result from a complex intertwining of chemical processes, erosion, and salt infiltration into the soft limestone.

Over the centuries, the Sphinx has undergone dramatic deterioration: already at the time of Pharaoh Thutmose IV (15th century BC), it was partially buried by sand, and it was then that the so-called Dream Stele was placed, on which the ruler recounts having had a vision in which the Sphinx, suffocated by the desert, promised him the kingdom in exchange for his liberation. Since then, the colossus has been buried and rediscovered several times, until modern excavations conducted starting in 1800 brought the entire body to light.

Today, the monument survives in a precarious state: thermal variations, pollution, and the water table of Giza continually threaten its fragile limestone. Restorations—some ancient, such as the blocks added by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, others recent, in concrete and synthetic limestone—have sought to contain rather than reverse the damage.

It remains an enigma of restless power: a human face emerging from the body of a beast, the Egyptian attempt to give visible form to absolute authority, something that is at once intellect and strength, thought and stone. Modern habit has domesticated it, reducing it to a tourist icon, but nothing prevents us from thinking that, for those who saw it emerge from the rock for the first time, the Sphinx was a terrifying creature, the immobile guardian of eternity.

VII. The Contemporary Experience: The Visitor and the Simulacrum

Walking among the pyramids today means confronting the loss of silence. The voices of street vendors, the calls of guides, the din of buses form a soundtrack that cannot be ignored. But it is precisely in this noise that, paradoxically, we can perceive the distance that separates us from them: we, travelers of the present, immersed in the global tourist flow; they, builders of a circular time, where death was only a form of continuity.

There are moments, however, when the site empties. In the late afternoon, when the organized tours return to Cairo and the light becomes slanted, the sand turns coppery and the pyramids return to shadows. It is then that the true scale of the place is once again perceived: not the physical scale, but the mental one. The pyramid is a time machine in reverse—it doesn't project forward, but sucks back. The contemporary visitor, armed with a smartphone and a bottle of water, becomes for a moment a point in history, a marginal figure within a chronology that surpasses them by millennia. In contrast to Cairo, immense, incongruous, always seemingly poised to engulf the ghost of the pyramids emerging from the depths of time.

Giza's grandeur lies not only in its size, but in its ambiguity. It is simultaneously monument and ruin, power and dust, calculation and mystery. Each era has projected its own idea of the absolute onto it: the Greeks saw it as a symbol of archaic wisdom, the Romans as a technical marvel, 19th-century Europeans as an emblem of the immobile East. Today we see it as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a checklist destination, an Instagrammable fragment. But in reality, the pyramid continues to resist definition.

The pyramids await nothing, but remember everything. They are a memory without a subject, an archive of the world. And perhaps this is what unsettles those who visit them: the fact that nothing human remains within them except the imprint of will. Man disappears, but the idea of permanence endures.

Standing before the Great Pyramid of Cheops, a modern traveler—tired, tanned, with a crumpled ticket in his pocket—is faced with the same question an Egyptian peasant posed five thousand years ago: what does it mean to exist for a time that is not ours? The pyramids don't answer. But the silence they emanate is, ultimately, the most ancient of answers.

VIII. Practical advice for your visit

As I've already written, I visited the pyramids in August. Every source I consulted strictly advised against avoiding this period due to the stifling heat, and I emphatically disagree. August is definitely the best time to visit the pyramids; while temperatures easily reach 40 degrees Celsius, it's a very dry, yet tolerable heat, and the advantage of visiting in the low season, when the tourist influx is relatively low, is priceless.

Even at the height of the low season, when all the locals assured me that the site was practically "empty", the site was ravaged by the worst expressions of overtourism, and I dare not imagine what could happen in the high season, but overall the crush of rude tourists was tolerable.

As of August 2025, the new main gate located at the western end of the Giza plateau is already operational; however, the eastern entrance, near the Sphinx, is still operational. I recommend entering through this entrance, at least as long as it remains operational, for two reasons. First, because I stayed at this Airbnb, which I recommend to everyone for the spectacular view of the Pyramids. I enjoyed it every evening for five days, allowing me to soak up the skyline even more than I did during the visit to the Pyramids themselves. If you stay at this Airbnb, or another nearby one that offers the same view, this entrance is less than a minute's walk away.

Furthermore, the entrance from the Sphinx seems to me the best to immediately enjoy the most spectacular view of the entire complex and then gradually ascend through the three pyramids and towards the panoramic points.

Another issue reported in literally every source I consulted concerned the problem of scammers who obsess tourists, making a visit virtually impossible without a local guide. None of this. In Egypt, it's unfortunately a common experience to be harassed by locals offering any unwanted service and then demanding a tip, but this doesn't happen at the pyramids any more than anywhere else; in fact, I'd say the opposite. I strolled through the entire plateau for six hours, completely untroubled; there were a few incidents, paradoxically perpetrated by authorized personnel, but nothing you can't quickly get used to while staying in Cairo.

Another new addition following the renovation of the entire complex is the continuous presence of shuttle buses connecting the various points of the site. My advice is to explore the plain by walking as much as possible, slowly savoring the sights of the monuments from every possible perspective. Even under the August sun, it's an experience accessible to everyone. I'm a 50-year-old in terrible shape who spends most of my time at a desk, but I encountered no problems traversing the length and breadth of the plain on foot. The key is to bring comfortable sneakers (hiking boots are absolutely not necessary) and water. The shuttle buses, which run continuously and are air-conditioned, are invaluable for saving a few minutes when traveling from one place to another, especially when reaching the most popular panoramic viewpoint, which I definitely recommend including in your visit.

Starting from the east entrance (at least until it's operational) and proceeding to the left, you'll cross a short path past a few tents selling junk and immediately reach the Sphinx. Visiting the Sphinx is quite quick, as you can't directly access it; you can only gaze at it from a ledge on the monument's right side. Take your time to enjoy the view of this ancient structure, then proceed, on a gentle, gradual climb, across the plain toward the pyramid of Khafre. At that point, it's up to you to decide how to proceed: wander aimlessly among the three pyramids, visit the pyramid of Cheops first, or head straight for the panoramic viewpoints. The visit to the pyramids essentially ends with these stops, taking all the time you need to slowly savor the view, observing the changing light on the surfaces over time, the contrast between geometric order and natural disintegration, the perspectives and proportions.

Among the places that require a separate ticket is the tomb of Meres Ankh, which didn't impress me at all. If you're tired or can't find it (in fact, without signs, it's not very easy, and you might have to pay a small bribe to a local to escort you to the entrance), you can easily skip it without suffering any regrets later; it's a small tomb with some negligible decorations.

Horses and camels: no, please. Aside from the stupidity of adhering to such a low-profile stereotype... and the fact that you would be fueling an industry that exploits the suffering of so many poor beasts, few things ruin the beauty of a visit to the pyramids like the cacophony of noisy tourists shouting to each other from one end of the caravan to the other, or bursting into shrill laughter every time a dromedary dangles on a pile of sand.

The entrance to the Pyramid of Cheops: I'd also read worrying reports about this part of the visit, saying the path leading to the sarcophagus chamber was horribly narrow and impassable, warning anyone suffering from claustrophobia against venturing into such a meander. I'd also say these claims are exaggerated. The entrance to the great pyramid can be broken down into four sections: the first is a perfectly normal stone corridor, a few dozen meters long, which is normally walked standing up, wide enough to allow for incoming and outgoing traffic. This is followed by a corridor, the most difficult, which must be walked at a 90-degree angle, barely wider than a person, requiring one of the two people facing each other to stop and allow the other to pass. This second section, too, is no more than 30 meters long, I'd estimate. Then follows another short, very large corridor, the only difficulty of which is its steep incline. At the end of this corridor, a few meters long and about a meter high, I'd say, finally leads to the sarcophagus chamber. The author is a 50-year-old in terrible physical shape who spends most of his time sitting at a desk and has paid the price for this journey simply with profuse perspiration; I've seen people in much worse physical condition than mine make the journey and reach the mortuary chamber with enough breath to utter futile shrieks of jubilation. All things considered: only those suffering from pathological claustrophobia should miss the experience. The experience itself would, or should, be thrilling: there's absolutely nothing inside the sarcophagus chamber, but it would, or should, be extremely evocative to find oneself inside this immense edifice, built thousands of years ago by a great extinct civilization to house the mortal remains of its king/deity. Unfortunately, the sarcophagus chamber is infested with shrill tourists who take selfies with what remains of the sarcophagus container, which almost entirely suppresses the emotion of being in such a sacred place. Now, I'm not saying we should show respect to the burial site, which has long since ceased to serve that purpose, and after all, housed the remains of a bloodthirsty dictator from many years ago; but respect for history, that is certainly due and should be shown with deference. And yet, no, packs of goats dripping and taking selfies while making the peace sign with their fingers, may God strike them down.

Is it worth the ticket price and the effort to go inside the Pyramid? Setting aside the rude tourists, I’d say yes—undoubtedly. Even though there’s nothing substantial to see apart from an empty chamber, it’s a thrilling experience to find yourself in the giant’s belly: to observe, step by step, the enormous blocks laid systematically with precision and millimetric accuracy; to imagine the monument slowly rising during its construction, day after day, year after year; and to reflect on the centuries it has witnessed.

Noises and selfies in the sarcophagus chamber

• Hours and access: The site is generally open from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm (in summer, it may open earlier). It's advisable to arrive early, before the tour buses arrive.

• Tickets: Entrance to the pyramid area costs around 600 EGP; internal access to the Great Pyramid is separate (around 900 EGP). Prices vary periodically.

• Transportation: From downtown Cairo, Giza can be reached by taxi or Uber; the metro (Line 3, Giza Station stop) will soon connect to the new GEM visitor center. The 2km walkway connecting the new GEM to the north side of the Great Pyramid of Giza will officially open in October 2025.

• Clothing and climate: The sun (I visited the pyramids in late August) is very strong, although the dry climate makes the temperature bearable. A hat, sunglasses, and water are essential.

• Guides and scams: Avoid accepting "spontaneous guides" on the site; in any case, a guide is not necessary. Study the necessary information ahead of time and then dedicate yourself to walking slowly through the site.

• Visiting Times: A complete visit to the Giza Plateau requires 6 hours, taking your time to stroll through the site, including the entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza. I expect the visit times may be longer during peak season, when lines, especially to enter the Great Pyramid, may be longer.

• Panoramic Views: One of the best spots for photography is the “Panorama Point”, accessible by shuttle bus and a short walk, from which you can see the three pyramids lined up.