Arrival
The Obelisk, Grand Hall and Grand Stairs
GEM choreographs your arrival: a suspended obelisk outside, an 83-tonne Ramesses II inside, then six floors of statues to a pyramid view.
Check dates and availability ↗The arrival sequence, in order
| Stage | What you see | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Forecourt | Hanging Obelisk of Ramesses II | From ancient Tanis; raised on a granite base so the cartouche underneath is visible |
| Grand Hall | Colossal statue of Ramesses II | Red granite, about 11 m tall and 83 tonnes |
| Grand Hall | Sakkara Cannon | King list naming 58 rulers, first to nineteenth dynasty |
| Grand Stairs | 59 artefacts across six floors | Royal statues, stelae, columns and sarcophagi; 148 steps with a parallel moving walkway |
| Top of the stairs | Window onto the plateau | Panoramic view of the Great Pyramids |
An obelisk you can walk beneath
The first thing you meet is outside the building. The obelisk of Ramesses II, recovered from the ancient delta city of Tanis, has been raised clear of the ground on a granite base supported by pillars — the only suspended obelisk in the world, according to the museum. The point of the engineering is that it lets you stand underneath and look up at the royal cartouche carved into the base, a surface that on a conventionally mounted obelisk is buried and invisible. It is a small idea, elegantly executed, and it sets the tone for a museum that keeps finding new angles on familiar objects.
The colossus the building was built around
Inside the Grand Hall stands the red granite colossus of Ramesses II: roughly eleven metres tall and about 83 tonnes, carved from Aswan granite around the thirteenth century BC. It was found at Mit Rahina, ancient Memphis, in 1820, spent decades from the 1950s standing in the Cairo square that took its name, and moved to the Giza site in 2006. It was installed in 2018 — before the atrium around it was finished. The museum was quite literally completed around the statue, which is why it sits so precisely on the hall's axis.
Fifty-nine artefacts, climbing
The Grand Stairs are an open-air gallery rather than a staircase with decoration. They span about 6,000 square metres, rise the equivalent of six floors over 148 steps, and are lined with 59 artefacts: royal statues, stelae, columns and sarcophagi. The arrangement is thematic rather than chronological, grouping royal images, divine houses, gods and kings, and funerary material, so that the climb works as an argument about how ancient Egyptians represented power and the afterlife. A moving walkway runs parallel for anyone who needs it, but the sequence is designed to be walked, and it loses its logic if you skip it.
The view that ends the climb
At the top of the Grand Stairs the building opens onto a window facing the Giza plateau, and the Great Pyramids appear framed at the end of the ascent. This is the museum's central architectural gesture and the reason the building sits where it does: GEM's north and south walls are aligned with the pyramids of Khufu and Menkaure. It is also the best free photograph in the complex. On a clear morning the view is genuinely startling, and it reframes everything you have just climbed past as a prelude to the monuments themselves.
What else stands in the Grand Hall
The colossus dominates, but the hall holds more. The Sakkara Cannon is a king list naming 58 rulers from the first dynasty to the nineteenth, effectively an ancient Egyptian view of their own history. The Victory Column of Merenptah commemorates his campaigns. There are Ptolemaic king and queen statues recovered from the sunken city of Heraklion in Abu Qir Bay, and a group of ten statues of Senwosret I. Most visitors walk straight through this space towards the stairs. It rewards ten minutes on the way in, or on the way back out when the crowd has thinned.