Egypt starts to weave its magic the moment we leave the airport. Elaborate mosques and sprawling government buildings compete for space alongside housing blocks...

Our airport transfer becomes a highlight of the trip the moment we see them. Well, two pyramids, to be exact, because the third and much smaller one is lost for some time behind the city view.

They appear, rising above the buildings, casting a watchful eye over the city.

A thin fog, no doubt the result of the much-talked-about Cairo pollution, gives them a magical appearance.

At our hotel we discover the country's bustling capital has built itself right up to the fringe of these mighty objects.

It's a 10-minute walk from the Le Meridien Pyramids hotel to their base. I soon discover I am not the only tourist on our trip who had the romantic notion of pyramids in the middle of the desert...

Cairo's original high-rise, Jessica Hurt, The Courier Mail, Australia, April 14, 2007.

The Tutankhamun exhibition opening at the Dome (now renamed the O2) on 15 November [2007] could transform the UK exhibition scene. Over 2m visitors are expected for the Egyptian treasures which will remain on view in Greenwich for nine and a half months. This would represent over 7,000 visitors a day — more than any exhibition surveyed for our global attendance report attracted last year. A standard ticket for “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” will cost £15 ($29) during the week and £20 ($39) at weekends, record prices for an art exhibition in Britain.

If the predictions of the Los Angeles-based Anschutz Entertainment Group are correct, their show will beat the British Museum’s 1972 Tutankhamun blockbuster as the most successful art or antiquities exhibition ever held in the UK. The 1972 show attracted 1,694,000 visitors over nine months (6,160 a day).

Anschutz promises the design of the Tutankhamun show will be “theatrical” and that The Dome/O2 will become an “entertainment destination”.

This new player on the London exhibition scene will represent competition for the established venues. The Tutankhamun show could affect visitor numbers at the British Museum’s show on China’s terracotta army, which opens on 13 September. The museum is expecting over 400,000 visitors for the seven-month run...

Tutankhamun show will transform exhibitions in the UK, Martin Bailey, The Art newspaper, UK, April 12, 2007.