Karnak Temple
A hundred and thirty-four columns sixty feet high in a single hall, built over two thousand years.
Duration
2 hrs 30 min – 4 hrs
Best time
At opening, around 6am
Open
Every day
Entry price
600 EGP
Karnak is not a temple but a complex built over nearly two thousand years, from the Middle Kingdom to the Roman period: each pharaoh added a court, a pylon or an obelisk, and the result is an accumulation rather than a plan.
The hypostyle hall is what you come for: a hundred and thirty-four columns across five thousand square metres, twelve of them twenty-one metres tall down the centre. They carried a slab roof; clerestory grilles lit the nave, and the original colours survive at the tops of the shafts, where the sun has never reached them.
Getting there
Three kilometres north of central Luxor, on the east bank. Calèche, taxi, or twenty minutes on foot along the avenue of sphinxes reopened in 2021.
What the price covers
paid entry, rate to be confirmed; the open-air museum is a separate ticket
What to bring
- 1.5 L of water
- Cap
Rules on site
The site is vast and unshaded: from ten o'clock it becomes hard going, and in summer it is unusable during the day. Guards offer to open closed areas for a tip — it is common, and you are not obliged to accept.
Checked on 29 August 2026 at Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities — Karnak