Lawrence Durrell famously described it as "the great wine-press of love". Constantine Cavafy, the father of modern Greek poetry, talked of its "absolute devotion to pleasure". E.M. Forster reckoned "darts and hearts, sighs and eyes, breasts and chests, all originated" in it. And intellectual heavyweight Michel Foucault called it "our birthplace [which] had mapped out this circle for all western language."
There can be few cities in the world that have captured the western imagination like Alexandria. Whether as the supposed birthplace of western literature, a site of romance and passion, a cosmopolitan utopia or simply a literary setting, we have appropriated this Egyptian port and its history as our own.
But trying to square these romantic ideals with the modern city makes one wonder whether we have laid claim to a myth. Wandering around the streets of central Alexandria today it is still possible to see the echoes of an earlier more cosmopolitan world in the few ancient ruins that remain, or in the shabby beauty of the architecture and the names of the hotels and restaurants: Pas troudis, Le Trianon, The Cecil, The Metropole - all evocative of that era when French and Greek and English dominated the area.
But westerners coming here for the first time, clutching their heavy copies of the Quartet and expecting to see Justine-like beauties wandering the streets or jaded intellectuals discussing the Cabbala in Greek over drinks in the city's famous cafes, tend to be angrily disappointed by the reality: a thoroughly Egyptian, shabbily genteel, seaside town that transforms into an overcrowded Blackpool-sur-Med during the summer.
Perhaps our romantic perceptions are clouded by Alexandria's impressive history. Established in the 4th century BC as a Macedonian outpost in Egypt by that most enigmatic of leaders, Alexander the Great, the city later grew famous for its unparalleled library. Scholars from all over the antique world were attracted to this centre of learning and transformed it from a colonial port to a cosmopolitan centre of learning and tolerance.
Against this backdrop, Anthony and Cleopatra played out their passion; Hellenistic, then Roman, culture waxed and waned; and early Christians disputed the nature of Christ.
But all good things come to an end. The Great Library was destroyed either by war or, more likely, by Christian zealots in the 4th century AD, setting in motion a long decline that was briefly interrupted in 642, when the city was conquered by the Arabs. By the time Napoleon landed here on his "civilising mission" in 1789, Alexandria was little more than a small fishing port with a lot of ancient ruins.
The city had a renaissance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thanks to a huge influx of wealth from the development of Egyptian cotton production and the shifting of populations that accompanied the disintegration of the Ottoman empire. The foreign communities that settled here included Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Levantine Christians, Italians, French and British.
It was here that Cavafy, Forster, Durrell and a host of other writers lived and, although they tended to be more inspired by the city's past than its present, it is this era that survives in our collective memory.
But even when Durrell was posted here during the second world war, there seemed to be a divergence between literature and reality. For while his opus describes a sensuous, intellectually vibrant and cosmopolitan city, in his letters to the American writer Henry Miller he complained that Alexandria was dull and provincial.
"A saturated middle European boredom laced with drink and Packards and beach-cabins," he wrote. To another friend, he described the city as a "melting-pot of dullness."
In the 1950s, nationalisations and the Suez war put an end to the privileges enjoyed by the city's large foreign contingent and forced all but a tiny minority to leave. The city was reclaimed by its majority and its focus shifted inward. It now looks towards - and is overshadowed by - Cairo, with its 16 million inhabitants and large foreign community, where cosmopolitanism is of the late 20th century variety that comes with air travel, the internet and multinational-driven consumerism.
Not even the wealthy denizens of Alexandria spend much time in their city now. In the summer months, the city's population doubles with an invasion of middle- and lower-middle class Cairenes. The corniche plays host to vendors and wandering groups of bored young men. The beaches are crowded with large families and women wade into the sea wearing long galabiyas.
The Westernised elite shudders and hunkers down along the coast in an area called Agamy, where wealth and bad taste are present in equal measure and bikinis are defiantly de rigeur.
The irrelevance of Durrell and his ilk to the inhabitants of this modern city is perhaps best illustrated by the fate of the old villa in which he lived during the war. Situated in Muharram Bey, an area of gracious old houses interspersed with modern high-rises, the villa is on a compound that was owned by an Italian family until they sold it to developers in 1994.
Although the property also contains a house that once belonged a famous native Alexandrian artist, the place was stripped and almost demolished before an international outcry forced the local authorities to belatedly step in.
Now the two semi-destroyed historical sites sit waiting for their fate to be decided. A group of writers and artists has formed a pressure group to try and save the buildings but, ironically, they are based in London rather than Alexandria. A writer friend who is part of the group told me that when he tried to raise the matter with the Egyptian cultural attache in London, the man had never even heard of Durrell.
There have been attempts to revive Alexandria's distant cosmopolitan past in recent years, however. In 1990, the first international francophone university, l'Universite
Leopold Senghor, was inaugurated here with the aim of linking francophone Europe with Africa (although few Alexandrians would describe themselves as African.) Far more ambitious was the project begun a year earlier, when the first stone was laid in a mammoth effort to rebuild the Great Library of Alexandria. Initiated by the Egyptian government with the backing of UNESCO, the hyper-modern structure was designed by a Norwegian architect and is currently under construction. But unlike its ancient predecessor its growing bulk sits uncomfortably on the seafront of this pleasant provincial city, a reminder of past glory at the expense of the present.
One spring afternoon I stood in front of the Cecil Hotel (where Justine "sat among the dusty palms, dressed in a sheath of silver drops") and hired a taxi to take me to Montazah, a public garden at the city's eastern edge and site of a 19th century palace now used as a summer residence by President Hosni Mubarak. As we drove east along the seafront mile after unrelenting mile of shoddily-built high-rises stood to our right. The only gaps in this concrete wall were empty lots with the rubble of recently-demolished villas and hoardings announcing the construction of yet more 20storey monstrosities.
Still, I reasoned, large swathes of the Mediterranean's shore are crowded with ugly development, so perhaps Alex is still part of this Greater Mediterranean world. But turning a single city block in from the sea it turned out that even this non-descript ugliness was a facade.
We were now firmly in lower-middle class Egypt, with its vast tracts of low-rise blocks and small shops selling cheap plastic goods. This is the true heart of the modern city and neither Durrell or Cavafy have anything to do with it.
I wondered aloud whether anyone here would have heard of the writers. "Who?" asked my driver. But given the apparent irrelevance of the majority of Alexandrians to either writer's work, except as picturesque local colour, perhaps this is fitting.
So if we must look for our own literary references to this Egyptian port town, then perhaps T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is the best source:
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal.