Aswan

Egypt's southern gateway, with Nubian temples and the High Dam. Aswan is Egypt's southernmost city, where the Nile runs between granite boulders and Nubian villages painted in blue. Its monuments were largely moved or rescued during the 1960s UNESCO campaign that followed the building of the Aswan High Dam: the temple of Philae was dismantled and rebuilt on Agilkia Island, and the temples of Abu Simbel were cut into blocks and raised 65 metres above Lake Nasser. Elephantine Island in midstream holds the remains of an ancient frontier town, and the quarries north of the centre still contain the Unfinished Obelisk.