El Alamein - Tourism

Tourism

El Alamein has a war museum with collectibles from "the civil war" and other North African battles. Visitors can also go to the Italian and German Military Cemetery on Tel el-Eisa Hill just outside the town. The German cemetery is an ossuary with the remains of 4,200 German soldiers, built in the style of a medieval fortress. The Italian cemetery is a mausoleum containing 5.200 tombs. Many tombs bear the soldier's name; many are simply marked "IGNOTO", unknown.

There is also a Commonwealth war cemetery with graves of soldiers from various countries who fought on the British side. This has monuments commemorating Greek, New Zealand, Australian, South African, Indian and Canadian forces. The names of 213 Canadian airmen appear on the El Alamein Memorial in Egypt.

Note that the remains of United States soldiers were not buried here. The Commonwealth cemetery, as is common at many such cemeteries in the world, consists of parallel rows of gravestones, each one bearing an engraving of the deceased soldier's unit emblem, his name and an epitaph from his family.