Cairo Airport Museum - Terminal 3

Since 2016, the Terminal 3 departures area at Cairo Airport has housed a small museum of around 50 original objects from pharaonic to Coptic times. Entry is free with a boarding pass, and about 30 minutes is enough to see it.

Cairo Airport had a simple, clever idea: put a small but genuine antiquities museum inside the terminal, so the many passengers who never make it to the Egyptian Museum can still see original pieces before they fly home. Terminal 3, the modern main terminal used by most European and long-haul flights, opened its museum in 2016.

It is compact, one gallery plus a corridor, but the objects are real and are swapped from time to time. Usually there are about 50 pieces from the pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Greco-Roman and Coptic periods: statues, mummy masks, jewellery, glass, pottery and a Coptic textile or two. Labels are in Arabic and English. You reach it on the departures side, once you have cleared security and immigration.

Terminal 2 has a smaller museum of its own.

What to see

• Original pharaonic objects, no ticket needed
• Coptic textiles and Greco-Roman glass
• Labels in English
• Something worthwhile to do on a layover or a long wait

Visiting

• Opening hours: whenever Terminal 3 is operating
• Tickets: free; boarding pass required (after security)
• Best time: leave yourself at least 30 minutes before your gate call
• Nearby: Terminal 2 museum, Heliopolis (15 minutes by taxi)