Roman rule and Arab conquest
Whereas Alexandria's Egyptians and Greeks had previously respected one another's deities and even syncretized them into a common cult (the worship of Serapis), religious conflicts developed under Roman rule (30 BC-313 AD). The empire regarded Christianity, which was supposedly introduced by St Mark in 45 AD, as subversive, and the persecution of Christians from 250AD onwards reached a bloody apogee under Emperor Diocletian, when the Copts maintain that 144,000 believers were martyred. (The Coptic church dates its chronology from 284 AD, the "Era of Martyrs", rather than Christ's birth.)

After the emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion, a new controversy arose over the nature of Christ, the theological subtleties of which essentially masked a political rebellion by Egyptian Copts against Byzantine (ie Greek) authority. In Alexandria, the Coptic patriarch became supreme and his monks waged war against paganism, sacking the Serapis Temple and Library in 391AD, and later murdering the female scholar Hypatia.

Local hatred of Byzantium disposed the Alexandrians to welcome the Arab conquest (641 AD), whose commander, Amr, described the city according to what he saw that it contained: "4000 palaces, 4000 baths, 400 theatres, 1200 greengrocers and 40,000 Jews". But while the Arabs incorporated elements of Alexandrian learning into their own civilization, they cared little for a city which "seemed to them idolatrous and foolish", preferring to found a new capital at Fustat (now part of Cairo). Owing to neglect and the silting-up of the waterways that connected it to the Nile, Alexandria inexorably declined over the next millennium, so that when Napoleon's expeditionary force arrived in 1798, they found a mere fishing village with four thousand inhabitants.

Mohammed Ali and colonial rule
Alexandria's revival sprang from the sultan Mohammed Ali's desire to make Egypt a commercial and maritime power, which necessitated a seaport. The Mahmudiya Canal, finished in 1820, once again linked Alexandria to the Nile, while a harbour, docks and arsenal were created with French assistance. European merchants erected mansions and warehouses, building outwards from the Place des Consuls (modern-day Midan Tahrir), and the city's population soared to 230,000.

Nationalist resentment of foreign influence fired the Orabi revolt of 1882, in retaliation for which British warships shelled the city, whose devastation was completed by arsonists and looters. Yet such was Alexandria's vitality and commercial importance that it quickly recovered.

Having survived bombing during World War II, Alexandria experienced new turmoil in the post-war era, as anti-British riots expressed rising nationalism . The revolution that forced King Farouk to sail into exile from Alexandria in 1952 didn't seriously affect the "foreign" community (many of whom had lived here for generations) until the Anglo-French-Israeli assault on Egypt during the Suez Crisis of 1956. The following year, however, Nasser expelled all French and British citizens and nationalized foreign businesses, forcing a hundred thousand non-Egyptians to emigrate. Jewish residents also suffered after the discovery of an Israeli-controlled sabotage unit in the city, so that by the year's end only a few thousand Alexandrian Greeks and Jews remained. Foreign institutions, street names and suchlike were Egyptianized, and the custom of moving the seat of government to Alexandria during the hot summer months was ended.

Contemporary Alex
Though "old" Alexandrians undoubtedly regret the changes since Suez, Durrell's complaint that they produced "leaden uniformity" and rendered Alexandria "depressing beyond endurance" seems jaundiced and unjustified. Egypt's second city (pop. 5,000,000) has become more Egyptian and less patrician, but it doesn't lack contrasts and vitality (except by comparison with Cairo). The difference is that middle-class Egyptians set the tone, not Greeks, Levantines and European expats. If Cavafy, arak and child brothels represented the old days, McDonald's, Coke and Nike symbolize a new and brasher kind of cosmopolitanism. Overcrowding, pollution and traffic have all worsened, but - unlike pressure-cooker Cairo - the Med still keeps Alex cool.

With few monuments to show for its ancient lineage and much of its modern heritage rejected, one seeks Alexandria's past in institutions like Pastroudis; minutiae such as old nameplates; the reminiscences of aged Arabs, Greeks and Jews; and in the literary dimension . E.M. Forster's Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922) remains the classic source book, but Forster reckoned that the best thing he did was to publicize the work of Alexandrian-born Constantine Cavafy. Nostalgia, excess, loss and futility - the leitmotivs of Cavafy's poems - also pervade Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet : indeed, Durrell used Cavafy as the basis for his character Balthazar. However, bearing in mind the ancient adage that "a big book is a big nuisance", you might prefer Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar, a concise evocation of post-revolutionary Alex from an Egyptian standpoint. For more recent, foreign views of Alex, check out Charlie Pye-Smith's The Other Nile, Douglas Kennedy's Beyond the Pyramids, and Paul William Roberts' River in the Desert.