The first stage of a £14 million project was completed at the location of the three Giza Pyramids yesterday as part of a plan to modernise the World Heritage site. The last of the surviving seven wonders of the ancient world are now surrounded by a 12 mile fence with infrared sensors and security cameras, ensuring that local vendors are kept at bay.
Anyone who has experienced the Pyramids on an Egypt holiday before would have been greeted by little more than a stone wall and a vast stretch of open desert, something which failed to deter hawkers from nearby slums, who often pushed their selling methods to the limits, sometimes with aggression. Officials were also keen to deter overzealous tourists who often abused access by attempting to scale the sides of the pyramids, and occasionally suffering a fatal fall.
The developers insist that the attraction is now more tourist-friendly with a brand new lighting system, a cafeteria, visitor’s centre and a bookshop. Egypt’s chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass famously called the site a ‘zoo’ before the construction of the exclusion zone which now surrounds the three Giza pyramids and the Sphinx, which sit just outside of Cairo.
Shaban Abdel-Gawad, head of the Egyptology department at Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said the recent developments, which began several years ago, would make the site ‘much nicer for the tourists’. Eventually, it is expected that golf cart style vehicles will ferry tourists around the site, similar to those already in place at the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.
