After twenty years and an estimated $1 billion, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) has taken to build is ready to welcome visitors.

Set between Cairo and the Great Pyramid of Giza, the 5.2-million-square-foot structure will be the world's largest archeological museum holding over 100,000 artifacts from Egypt’s history. For the first time ever, King Tut’s entire treasure collection will be on display alongside artifacts from pre-historic times through Egypt’s many thousands of years of pharaonic civilization through the [comparatively] more modern ancient Greek and Roman periods of Egyptian history.

The museum, designed by Irish architectural firm Henghan Peng, began in 2003 as a competition launched by the Egyptian government for the design of a new museum complex to house, display, and preserve some of the world’s greatest ancient treasures. Construction on the new museum began in earnest in 2005, but setbacks of environmental, financial, and political natures, from the financial crisis in 2018 to 2011’s Arab Spring and the Covid pandemic, soon beset the ambitious project and monumental delays ensued.

In an interview with CNN, Egypt’s Tourism Minister, Ahmed Issa, said that Israel-Hamas war that has consumed the Gaza Strip has had an inconsiderable effect on tourism to the country. The opening of the museum comes at the same time as Egypt aims to double the amount of tourism to the country over the next five years with a goal of 30 million visitors by 2028.