The Siwa Oasis must be earned. It takes 10 hours by bus from Cairo to cross 560 kilometers of desert, or seven hours by private car. For hours, there is nothing – the desert, vast and empty – and then you arrive in a small town 40 kilometers from Libya. A certain nervous excitement takes hold of the new arrival. Here, another country begins, far from the Nile and the Red Sea resorts, far from the chaotic capital and the overcrowded delta. The visitor realizes they are somewhere else.

In 2025, Egypt welcomed 19 million tourists, according to government data. How many make it all the way to Siwa? Very few. “Even though the oasis attracts more and more visitors, we are still a long way from the rest of the country,” explained Sergio Volpi, an Italian with a passion for Egyptology who has been living in Siwa for several years with his French partner, Pascale Bellamy, a novelist whose books are set in ancient Egypt. Volpi is the de facto local historian, running a library open to all in the heart of the town, and he is inexhaustible when it comes to “Siwa’s unique past.” He pointed out that the oasis only became part of the country in 1820, long after the other provinces and oases of Egypt (Al-Fayoum, Dakhla, etc.).

“Visitors to Siwa are not like the others,” Volpi added. “They are looking for something else, an atmosphere, a story.” Hot springs, salt lakes where you can float, palm groves, a fortress: The oasis is a world apart. In antiquity, pilgrims came to consult the oracle of Amun. Alexander the Great himself is said to have come to question it, in an exchange that remains shrouded in mystery and has fueled many legends. Throughout history, merchants and worshippers have continued to cross this Amazigh (Berber) territory, the easternmost part of this people’s cultural area, which stretches along the entire North African coast.

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