4/41.- Alexandria, Midan saad zaghloul

This photo was taken in Midan Saad Zaghlul. At the center of this square stands a statue dedicated to this Alexandrine nationalist leader. Opposite this monument stands a statue dedicated to Cleopatra. The park that surrounds the statue is one of the busiest squares in Alexandria.

On the location where now this square stands used to be the Caesareum, a temple begun by Cleopatra for her lover Antony. In this temple, completed by her enemy Octavian, Cleopatra committed suicide in 30 BC. In the 4th century AD it became the Christian cathedral of Alexandria. In 1877 the two giant obelisks that used to stand in front of the temple, known as Cleopatra's needles, were moved to the Thames embankment in London and to the Central Park in New York, respectively. Nothing else remains today of the cesareum.

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