CAIRO: The Marina Al-Alamein archeological site will open four visitors mid-September, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement Tuesday. The archeological site is the largest in the north coast, stretching over 189 acres, the SCA said. It hosts a display for Roman villas, baths, marketplaces, remains of a church, tombs, streets, a Roman theater and various statues, according to Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). The site will be open during the day and at night; the SCA said a “high-tech” light system has been installed. In a bid to encourage local tourism, the entrance fee for the site will be LE 5 for Egyptians with a 50 percent discount for students, said Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, Head of the Central Administration of Lower Egypt. Hawass stressed the significance of the site, citing the importance of the port during the Greco-Roman era. The area was called “Locasiss” back then, Abdel-Maqsoud added, which means “whit shell.” “It got this name because of the softness and the white color of its sand. The goddess of love, Aphrodite, was worshipped there and the statues found of her on the site show her emerging from a white shell, in reference to its name,” he explained. Abdel Maqsoud added that the entire site of Mina El-Alamein had been redone as part of the SCA's plan to develop archaeological sites along Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Over the past 10 years, the SCA has carried out several excavations at the site, in addition to restoration and conservation projects with the collaboration of the Polish Archaeological Institute in Cairo and the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). It's part of SCA's plan to develop archaeological sites along Egypt's Mediterranean coast.
