If Cairo is Egypt at full volume, Aswan is the country exhaling. This is the Nubian south, where the Nile is genuinely at its loveliest — sliding between granite boulders and palm-fringed islands, with golden dunes rising on the west bank and a sky that stays an improbable blue. The river is the whole point here: white-sailed feluccas drift past Elephantine Island, and the late-afternoon light on the water is the reason artists and writers have lingered for a century.

The set-piece monuments are island temples. Philae, dedicated to Isis, was moved stone by stone to the islet of Agilkia after the High Dam raised the river, and it remains the most romantic temple in Egypt, reached only by boat. Aswan's own granite quarries supplied half the obelisks of the ancient world, and the abandoned Unfinished Obelisk still lies in the bedrock where it cracked, showing exactly how the pharaohs cut their giants. But the city's soul is Nubian: cross to Gharb Soheil for villages of indigo and saffron houses, hibiscus tea and henna, or take a felucca to Elephantine, where painted hamlets cluster around an ancient Nilometer.

Aswan is also the launchpad for Abu Simbel, Ramesses II's mountain-carved colossi three hours south near the Sudanese border — for many travellers the single most awe-inspiring sight in Egypt. Back in town, the ritual is gentler: high tea on the terrace of the pink-walled Old Cataract, the Victorian palace where Agatha Christie wrote, watching the sun drop behind the dunes.