The reflected gateways
Pylons over the pools โ the Nile mirrored in Castile's sky.
Jeremy Thompson from Los Angeles, California โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Jeremy Thompson from Los Angeles, California โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Jeremy Thompson from Los Angeles, California โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Jeremy Thompson from Los Angeles, California โ CC BY 2.0
UNESCO's great Nubian rescue from Lake Nasser (the 1960s) moved Abu Simbel and Philae, and Egypt gifted four temples to key partner nations: Dendur to New York, Taffeh to Leiden, Ellesyia to Turin โ and Debod to Madrid, the completest and best-sited. A rare story of world cooperation, worth telling as you stand before it.
Outside at sunset is a complete experience. Inside is brief (twenty minutes) but the original chapel reliefs and the touch of standing within a Nile temple earn the queue for Egypt lovers โ and the upper hall recounts the whole Nubian rescue.
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A genuine two-thousand-year-old Egyptian temple stands on a Madrid hill โ Debod, Egypt's gift to Spain in 1968 for helping rescue Nubia's monuments from the High Dam waters, moved stone by stone from the Nile's bank south of Aswan and re-erected with its gateways over reflecting pools. Built by the Nubian king Adikhalamani in the second century BC and completed under Ptolemies and Romans for Amun and Isis, its inner reliefs survive legibly. For an Arab visitor the meeting astonishes: a piece of the Nile valley presiding over Castilian sunsets. And sunset is precisely its glory: the hill is Madrid's most famous sunset theatre โ the sun falling behind the Guadarrama sets the gates black on gold as half the city gathers. Interior entry is free with limited capacity โ the exterior open always.
Pylons over the pools โ the Nile mirrored in Castile's sky.
Adikhalamani's chapel with original carvings inside.
Madrid's most famous sunset from the hill's edge โ the city's daily rite.
Calle de Ferraz 1, 28008 Madrid