Egyptian Museum (Tahrir)

The grand old pink building on Tahrir Square has been Egypt's treasure house since 1902, and even after Tutankhamun's gold moved to the GEM and the royal mummies to NMEC, it still holds a staggering collection. This is old-school museum-going: crowded halls, handwritten labels, statues packed cheek by jowl, a cabinet-of-curiosities atmosphere the sleek new museums lack. Seek out the Old Kingdom masterpieces on the ground floor, the diorite statue of Khafre, the astonishingly lifelike painted Rahotep and Nofret, the seated scribe, and the eerie Amarna colossi of Akhenaten. Upstairs the tomb goods of Yuya and Tuya and rooms of jewellery, papyri and Fayum mummy portraits reward slow browsing. The Narmer Palette, arguably the oldest historical document in the world, is here too. Allow two to three hours, more if you love antiquity, and expect to make discoveries in dim corners no guidebook mentions.