While Qena is perhaps famed as the home of one of Egypt’s best-preserved Ptolemaic temples and Nile-side archaeological posts outside of Luxor, it also has the region’s most important Islamic religious sites and points of pilgrimage. These are the old Maghreb and Sheikh el-Qenawi mosques that pepper the town, the latter found towering over the central squares here with its whitewashed minarets and opulent domes.
Ever since the construction of the Wadi Qena, this provincial capital is also a favourite stopover for travellers making their way eastwards to the sprawling resorts of the Red Sea, as they head to its market to stock up on the famous “kullars”, porous water bottles made of local clay.
Qena tour guides would then advice visitors to make a jaunt down the banks of the river to the sprawling ruins of the Temple of Hathor in Dendera , which is still hailed as one of the most undamaged religious sites of the Egyptian 4th century, and supposedly concealing a wealth of even more ancient Khufu structures below.