The world’s largest archaeological museum is expected to open its doors in the first half of 2020. The Great Egyptian Museum (GEM) was first announced in 1992 and was originally scheduled to open in 2012. The news should revive a shaky tourism industry. politics and terrorist attacks and accounted for 12% of Egyptian GDP in 2018 according to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).
Strategically located on an area of 50 hectares in the immediate vicinity of the iconic Giza pyramids, the new museum will house 28 shops, ten restaurants, a conference center and a cinema. That is, the monument will not make ugly for tourism that goes to the country in search of the charms of traditional monuments.
Three galleries – two over 7,000 square meters and up to 20m high – will accommodate a collection of around 100,000 objects. Half of the collection will be accompanied by data that will emphasize the social, political and religious context of each object.
Institutional video of the Egyptian Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation – MIIC
Top attractions include 5,400 objects from King Tutankhamen’s tomb and 20,000 other items never before displayed, including archaeological finds from the past decades and monumental pieces too large for the current Egyptian Museum in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
GEM objects are being cared for by a team of about 100 conservatives and 100 curators who have been working on the collection since 2010.
Costing about US$ 1 billion, the new attraction is expected to receive five million visitors a year. The new museum is also expected to open a tourist circuit that will also include the new Sphinx International Airport, west of Cairo, located half an hour from there.
+ GME has a website that shows all the preparation work before the opening. The address is http://gem.gov.eg