Here is an appraisal of Alexandria from Frederick Lewis Norden, a Danish explorer who published his original text in 1755. Norden describes the Obelisk of Cleopatra, so named because her palace was said to be located there. He is very impressed with the gate of Rosetta and the column of Pompey, the measurements of which he describes in detail. A description of Cleopatra's canal warns of the flying camps of wild Arabians lurking nearby.
It seems that the modern city leaves much to be desired:
"New Alexandria may justly be looked on as a poor orphan who has no other inheritance but the respectable name if its father. The ancient city's wide extent, is contracted, in the new, to a small neck of land between the two ports. The most superb of her temples are dwindled into inconsiderable mosques; her most magnificent palaces are degraded into dwelling-houses, of a very paltry structure: the imperial residence is debased into a prison for slaves. A once wealthy and numbers people are now misrepresented by a few interested strangers, and a collection of wretches who live in sordid dependence. A mart, formerly so celebrated for its extensive commerce, is now decayed to a meer landing-place. Alas, it cannot be compared to the phoenix, that from its ashes springs anew into life; no, it is a poor crawling insect, the spawn of filth, and infected by the Alcoran: such is the fallen Alexandria of our days, and therefore undeserving a formal description." (18)
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