Why so long for the Grand Egyptian Museum to open?

Work has finally finished for Cairo's billion-dollar project, and now the race to the past begins

- Simon Calder

Calamitously delayed transport projects are nothing new.

Just ask long-suffering London commuters about the Elizabeth line, which opened - only partially completed - over three years late. Or German rail travellers, still waiting for Stuttgart’s Hauptbahnhof, seven years overdue. Passengers at Berlin airport can trump that; it opened nine years behind schedule.

Cultural venues, another crucial element of the travel experience, are far from immune to wildly optimistic predictions. What were they smoking at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam when they predicted a 21st-century refurbishment would take just three years? The site was off limits for a decade.

So cut the Grand Egyptian Museum some slack. The billion-dollar (£760m) project on the outskirts of Cairo has been dogged by logistical, political and financial delays. It will finally open to the public on Tuesday, two decades after construction began, and a dozen years behind schedule.

Reasons cited for repeated postponements include the Arab spring, the Covid pandemic and the war in Gaza. But with artefacts dating back five millennia, such a delay is barely a heartbeat.