Museums

Grand Egyptian Museum opening shifted to 2021

23 Apr, 2020

The Grand Egyptian Museum is now expected to open in 2021, not at the end of 2020.

Originally the project was due to open in 2013 but construction and fundingn problems delayed the much awaited opening and now the covid-19 pandemic has delayed it once again.

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Other major construction projects in Egypt have also been put off until 2021, including the official opening of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) in the old city of Fustat in Cairo which was started in 2004.

The $1 billion Grand Egyptian Museum (also called the Giza Museum) is sited near the pyramids of Giza and will house artefacts from pre-history to the Greco-Roman period. The major attraction will be the Tutankhamun collection all of which will be assembled together for the first time.

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The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) was designed by Heneghan Peng Architects based in Dublin and Berlin, which won one of the world's largest contests, against 1,557 other entries from 83 countries. Roisin Heneghan said that one of the difficulties in the design was to build a major museum next to one of the world's most famous monuments in such a way as to ensure that the museum would not dominate the site and detract from the environment around the pyramids.

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