The city Alexander the Great founded at the mouth of the Nile in 331 BCE — which became the ancient world's greatest center of knowledge, the meeting point of Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, and later Christian and Islamic intellectual traditions, and the site of the most famous library ever destroyed
Alexandria was designed to be the center of the world — and for several centuries, it was. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and developed by the Ptolemaic dynasty into the largest city in the Mediterranean world, Alexandria housed the Great Library, the Mouseion (the ancient world's closest equivalent to a research university), and a population that combined Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, and later Christian intellectual traditions in a continuous, creative tension. The knowledge preserved and created in Alexandria was transmitted to the Roman Empire, the Islamic world, and eventually to Europe — making Alexandria the relay station through which the ancient world's intellectual inheritance reached modernity.