Siwa is unlike anywhere else in Egypt. Tucked away in the Western Desert, a stone's throw from Libya and very far from everything, it's an oasis from another time: a sea of palm and olive trees springing from the sand, dotted with salt lakes of an impossible turquoise, bubbling springs to swim in and a mud fortress slowly melting under the sun. People here don't just speak Arabic but Siwi, a Berber language of its own, and the culture, houses, food and customs belong to a different world, closer to the Maghreb and the Sahara than to the Nile Valley.
The oasis also carries a legendary aura: this was home to the famous Oracle of Amun, one of the most revered in the ancient world, which Alexander the Great crossed the desert to reach in 331 BC to be recognised, according to tradition, as the son of the god and the rightful pharaoh of Egypt. That past, blended with the mud-and-salt architecture, the swims in Cleopatra's springs and the golden dunes of the Great Sand Sea, makes Siwa a destination for curious travellers looking for something authentic, remote and off the crowded routes.
This guide tells you how to get to Siwa (it's neither easy nor quick, but it's worth it), what to see and do —the Shali fortress, the oracle, the springs, the salt lakes, the desert safari—, when to go and what to keep in mind in a place with a conservative culture and little infrastructure. Siwa rewards those who take their time: it's one of those corners where you feel you've truly reached the end of the known world.
Siwa has been inhabited since ancient times and was famous in antiquity for its Oracle of Amun, one of the best-known sanctuaries in the Mediterranean, comparable to Delphi. Its moment of glory came in 331 BC, when Alexander the Great crossed the desert to consult it and, according to tradition, was greeted by the priests as the son of Amun, which legitimised his status as pharaoh. The oasis kept its Berber language and culture over the centuries, relatively isolated from the rest of Egypt. In the 13th century, the Siwis built the Shali fortress, a maze of kershef (salty mud) houses huddled on a hill to defend themselves from attacks. Isolated for almost all of its history, Siwa only became firmly integrated into the Egyptian state in the 19th century and was connected by road as late as the 20th century. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The other Egypt, the one that isn't the Nile: the vast Western Desert and its oases, such as Siwa, with its own Berber culture, the oracle of Amun and landscapes of dunes and springs.
Read the history of The desert and the oases →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Siwa is, above all, a geographical miracle. In the middle of Egypt's Western Desert, one of the driest regions on the planet, a depression below sea level suddenly opens up. Here groundwater rises to the surface in hundreds of springs, feeding a huge grove of date palms, olive groves and orchards ringed by an ocean of sand. This sharp contrast between total aridity and the lushness of the oasis explains why Siwa has been, since ancient times, a refuge of life in the heart of the Sahara and a strategic stop on the caravan routes between the Nile Valley, the Mediterranean coast and the interior of Libya.
The oasis has been inhabited since prehistory, and there is evidence of very early human presence drawn by the water and resources. Over time Siwa was settled by Berbers, the indigenous people of North Africa, who developed a culture of their own here: their language, Siwi (the only Berber language spoken in Egypt), their customs, their architecture and their social organisation. That Berber identity, distinct from the Arab Egypt of the Nile, has survived to this day, largely thanks to the oasis's extraordinary isolation.
For almost all of its history, reaching Siwa meant crossing days of desert by camel. That isolation was both a curse and a blessing. It kept the oasis poor and far from central power, but it also protected it, letting it preserve a unique way of life and culture that faded away elsewhere. Only very recently, with the road and tourism, did Siwa fully open up to the outside world.
What made Siwa famous across the ancient world was its oracle. At some point in the first millennium BC, the oasis became home to a sanctuary of the god Amun, whose oracle won a prestige comparable to that of the famous oracle of Delphi in Greece. Questions arrived from all over the Mediterranean: kings, cities and generals sent queries to the god, and his answers, passed on by the priests, were thought to be especially reliable. That such a remote oracle, lost in the desert, had such a reputation shows how much Siwa fascinated the ancient world.
Its finest hour came in 331 BC. Alexander the Great had just conquered Egypt and founded Alexandria when he set off on a risky expedition across hundreds of kilometres of desert to consult the oracle of Siwa. According to ancient historians, he nearly got lost on the way and was saved by providential signs. When he arrived, the priests are said to have greeted him as the son of Amun, the god the Greeks identified with Zeus. This confirmed his legitimacy as pharaoh of Egypt and fed his growing image as a semi-divine conqueror. The consultation left a deep mark on Alexander, who even said he wished to be buried in Siwa, although in the end he was not.
The pilgrimage turned the oasis into a place of myth, tied forever to the legend of Alexander. The remains of the oracle temple, in the village of Aghurmi, are still standing. They bear witness to that glorious past, when this isolated corner of the desert was one of the most important spiritual centres of the Mediterranean world.
After its ancient splendour, Siwa went through centuries of relative obscurity. It became Christian first and later Muslim, but it always stayed on the sidelines of major events. The Siwis, exposed to raids by Bedouin and desert bandits, adopted a distinctive defensive strategy. In the 13th century they founded the fortress town of Shali, a maze of houses packed onto a hill and built of kershef, a material found only here, made from blocks of salty mud from the oasis itself. The walls rose one on top of another, with narrow alleys and controlled entrances, forming a compact citadel where the whole population could take refuge and hold out.
For centuries, life in Siwa went on in and around Shali, governed by a council of elders and by deep-rooted local customs. The economy rested on dates and olives, of exceptional quality thanks to the spring water, which were traded with the caravans. Siwi society kept some unusual traits, some of them very different from the rest of Egypt, along with strong community ties. The isolation was such that Egypt's own rulers had little control over the oasis.
Kershef, however, had an Achilles' heel: water. Rain is extremely rare in Siwa, but when it comes it can be torrential, and the salty mud dissolves. A devastating storm in 1926 badly damaged Shali and sped up its gradual abandonment. The inhabitants began building new houses at the foot of the hill, and the old fortress became the cluster of golden ruins that crowns the town today, one of the most evocative landscapes in all of Egypt.
Siwa became a firm part of the modern Egyptian state quite late. Although it was nominally part of Egypt, the oasis kept a great deal of de facto autonomy until the 19th century. In the 1820s the army of Muhammad Ali, Egypt's moderniser, finally brought it under central rule. Even so, its remoteness continued to protect it. During the Second World War, the Western Desert saw military operations, and some of the tombs on the Mountain of the Dead served as shelters for the Siwis during the bombing.
The big change came in the 20th century with a paved road linking Siwa to Marsa Matruh and the Mediterranean coast, ending thousands of years of caravan isolation. The road brought modern life, electricity, state administration and, little by little, tourism. From the late 20th century onwards, a growing number of travellers began to arrive, drawn by the oasis's fame, its Berber culture, its landscapes and its history.
Siwa has thus become a model for a certain kind of alternative, sustainable tourism in Egypt. Ecolodges built of kershef using traditional techniques, some of them deliberately without conventional electricity and lit by candles, have chosen a low-impact approach that respects the environment and local culture. The challenge for the oasis today is to balance openness to the world and tourism income with protecting its Berber identity, its fragile ecosystem of springs and palm groves, and the character of a unique, remote, traditional place, which is exactly what makes it so special. In many ways, Siwa is still a world apart within Egypt.
