VICTORY MONUMENT

At the end of Ahmed Orabi Square stands a white colonnade, guarded by two motionless soldiers, facing a marble base where a passage from the Koran is engraved on the glorious dead. It is the Victory Monument. However, on the pediments at the ends of the colonnade is inscribed the year 1368 of the Hegira, corresponding to 28 December 1947, the death in Alexandria of the former king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III. This monument should have been his mausoleum, but in fact it is buried behind the high altar of the Latin cathedral, a few hundred meters away.