Luxor/Karnak

25.7188°N, 32.6573°E.

Twin temple complexes on the east bank of the Nile at modern Luxor, ancient Thebes. Karnak, the larger complex, covers 200 hectares and was built and rebuilt over approximately 2,000 years (2055 BCE to 100 CE) under more than 30 pharaohs. The Great Hypostyle Hall in Karnak's Temple of Amun-Ra contains 134 sandstone columns; the central twelve rise 21 metres tall with capitals 5.4 metres in diameter. Luxor Temple, 3 km south, was connected to Karnak by an avenue of 1,350 ram-headed and human-headed sphinxes — fully restored and reopened in 2021 after two decades of excavation. Hatshepsut's pair of red-granite obelisks at Karnak are each 29.5 metres tall, weighing 320 tonnes and quarried at Aswan 220 km south.

Egypt's most ambitious building project was a 2,000-year campaign of pharaohs who could not stop adding to the same temple — and the avenue of sphinxes between its halves was buried for a millennium before being walked again.