You stand at the fort guarding the mouth of the Nile, the spot where a French officer repairing the walls in 1799 turned up a dark granite slab carved in three scripts: the Rosetta Stone. Your guide tells the story of that find and how the stone, with its Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic text, became the key that unlocked 3,000 years of silent Egyptian writing. The original sits in the British Museum now, but standing where it was found makes the story land. The river and sea meet just beyond the walls.

You walk into the old town, one of the best-preserved Ottoman-era streetscapes in Egypt. Tall houses of interlocking red and black brick rise three and four storeys, their carved wooden mashrabiya screens leaning over the lanes, built by the merchants who grew rich when Rosetta was Egypt's main port before Alexandria revived. Your guide leads you inside one or two of the restored houses and through the old mill and market. With almost no other tourists, it feels like a town that time set aside.

You visit the Rashid National Museum, set in a grand old Ottoman house, where the town's layered story is laid out, from its medieval port days to the French Expedition of 1798 to 1801. Then you take a short boat onto the Nile, where the river runs wide toward the sea and the undeveloped east bank gives a clear sense of how Rosetta's waterfront looked two centuries ago. Your guide fills in the history as the water slides past. It is a calm close to an unusual day.