State Museum of Egyptian ArtKunstareal
Egypt: History and Modernity
About 100 photographs by Alfred Seiland exploring how 5,000 years of Egyptian history intersect with everyday life today, from Nile monuments to modern cities and villages.
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Alfred Seiland photographs pyramids and temples together with the modern settlements and tourist infrastructure around them. For this show he made several photo trips through Egypt in 2025 and 2026, and the pictures cover sites along the Nile, cities, villages, oases and coastal regions.
You see the monuments as national symbols, as tourist stops and as parts of modern towns, and you see the archaeologists and conservators who work on them. The museum's own texts put the count at 100 to 120 photographs, around 20 of them large-format. Seiland is best known for Imperium Romanum, a long project on traces of Roman antiquity in the present, shown in Cologne and Luxembourg. All captions are in German and English. Every Marienplatz selfie crops out the crowd; Seiland keeps it in.
Entry is €7, €5 reduced, €1 on Sundays, and under-18s are free. The museum stays open until 20:00 on Tuesdays. The show runs to 4 April 2027 and is planned to travel on afterwards.
Editor's pick
About 100 photographs by Alfred Seiland set Nile monuments beside modern cities and villages, looking at how 5,000 years of history meet everyday life in Egypt today.
Look for
Monuments inside modern Egypt
Pyramids and temples are shown with the settlements and tourist infrastructure that surround them, rather than as isolated sites.
The large-format prints
About 20 of the photographs are printed large, among views of Nile sites, cities, villages, oases and coasts.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
Skip if
You came only for ancient objects: this show is all contemporary colour photographs.
With kids
Under-18s are free.
Also at State Museum of Egyptian Art
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
8
- From Turner to van Gogh: The 19th CenturyJ. M. W. Turner / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Images of People: Portrait and Genre Photographs from the Dietmar Siegert CollectionCourtesy of Alte Pinakothek
- Between and Beyond: Interspaces and Transitions in Art since 1960Foto: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Sibylle Forster © Estate of Dan Flavin / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026
- State Museum of Egyptian ArtFred Romero / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Alte PinakothekChronox-A / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National SocialismRaimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0
- GlyptothekDaderot, Public domain
- Pinakothek der ModerneRufus46, CC BY-SA 3.0