After several postponements of work and openings, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) must be officially inaugurated on November 1, 2025. Begun in the 1990s, due to the saturation of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the GEM was to open in 2010, after a call for projects that the Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects won in 2003. The ambition was great: 100,000 objects preserved on nearly 500,000 m², more than half of which are gardens, at a cost of 475 million euros. With the aim of welcoming 5 million visitors per year, the GEM was to be the largest museum dedicated to a single civilization.
It must today accommodate a large part of the non-exhibited collections of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (30,000) as well as those of certain regional museums. The building, inspired by the pyramids and ancient Egyptian architecture, adjoins the Great Pyramids of Giza. The main building of 100,000 m² houses and exhibits 50,000 archaeological objects (in comparison, the Louvre exhibits 35,000), the other 50,000 being kept in reserves.
The galleries, spread over several levels and in five zones, allow you to discover, for the first time, the entire collection of Tutankhamun, comprising 5,000 objects. The museum is equipped with mediation and educational spaces as well as new generation digital tools. A conference room and shops complete the package. The other jewel of this complex is the conservation center, equipped with 17 restoration laboratories, which was inaugurated in 2010. A footbridge connects the museum to the pyramids.
Grand Egyptian Museum.
© GEM
From the start of the project, construction was postponed to begin in 2012, for an opening in July 2015, then postponed to 2017 for a partial opening, with a full inauguration planned for 2018. The Arab Spring of 2011 seriously complicated the site. The cost had been revised upwards to reach more than 700 million euros, 65% financed by Japan. The opening was pushed back again to summer 2021, when the museum was 98% complete. This second delay occurred during the coronavirus pandemic. Then, at the beginning of 2022, the opening was postponed for fall 2022, as construction was completed and reached 99%.
From March 2023, the museum was partially open for visits, mainly private, and the spaces were already partially privatized for certain events. Until the government announced the opening for July 3, 2025, before reversing course following the unstable situation in the Middle East, with the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which pushed back the opening one last time until next Saturday. At present, the project will have cost more than a billion dollars and targets between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors per day or around 5 million per year.
The Egyptian government hopes to revive the country’s economy through tourism. An inflow of money and foreign currency that it needs after several years of decline in the number of tourists. In the mid-2010s, Egypt attracted only a few million tourists; in 2024, 15.7 million visitors will come. The State aims to increase this figure to 30 million in 2032.
Grand Egyptian Museum.
© GEM
