Grand Egyptian Museum

The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is a long-planned new central museum complex for Cairo and Egypt, intended to replace the Egyptian Museum - founded in 1902 - as the main venue for the country's abundant heritage treasures. It'll be sited on 50 hectares of land in Giza, as a core part of a new master plan for the plateau.

The GEM project began as far back as 1992, but has been slow in coming to fruition - the foundation stone was only laid a decade later, and the museum isn't expected to be opened until as early as mid-2012. It'll be a massive structure once completed - shaped like a chamfered triangle, with a stone roof, the GEM will boast 100,000 square metres of floor space – the size of 11 football pitches – with provision for up to 100,000 artefacts at full capacity. It's expected to cost in the region of $550 million.

The highlight among the GEM collection will be Howard Carter's Tutankhamun collection. The great Statue of Ramesses II which previously stood in Ramses Square in Cairo is currently being cleaned up in preparation for being placed at the entrance to the museum. Speaking in February 2013, Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosni described the Grand Egyptian Museum as the biggest cultural project in the world, and called it a “cultural high dam that fulfills Egyptians’ dreams and belongs to the whole world.”