Cairo Airport Museum โ Terminal 3
๐ Location: Cairo International Airport, Terminal 3 departures ย ยท ย ๐บ Focus: Highlights of Egyptian civilization ย ยท ย ๐๏ธ Tickets: free with your boarding pass
Cairo International Airport has the genuinely brilliant idea of placing a small but real antiquities museum inside the terminal building, so that the millions of passengers who never quite have time to visit the Egyptian Museum in Cairo can still see some original pharaonic objects before they fly home. Terminal 3 โ the modern main terminal serving most European and long-haul flights โ got its own museum in 2016.
It is small (one gallery and a corridor) but the objects on display are real and rotated periodically: typically a selection of around 50 pieces spanning the pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Greco-Roman and Coptic periods, including statuary, mummy masks, jewellery, glass, ceramics and a Coptic textile or two. Information panels are in Arabic and English. It is accessible to passengers after they have cleared security and immigration on the departures side.
There is also a smaller museum in Terminal 2 โ see our page.
Highlights
- Real pharaonic artefacts in a free-access space
- Coptic textiles and Greco-Roman glass
- Information panels in English
- Perfect for a layover or a long pre-flight wait
Visiting
- Opening hours: during Terminal 3 operating hours
- Tickets: free; boarding pass required (post-security)
- Best time: allow at least 30 min before your gate-call
- Nearby: Terminal 2 museum, Heliopolis (15 min by taxi)