Esna Temple Day Trip

Esna Temple sits about 55 km south of Luxor, dug out from a deep pit beneath the modern town that grew up around and over it across the centuries. What makes it worth the trip is a years-long restoration project that revealed the temple's original, vividly colored ceiling and columns beneath centuries of soot and grime — the colors here are some of the most vibrant of any surviving Egyptian temple.

The temple's setting, well below current street level and surrounded by the modern town rather than open desert, gives a striking, tangible sense of how much of ancient Egypt still lies buried beneath places people live today.

A good half-day trip if you want to see recent restoration work up close alongside the more famous sites.