A genuinely old port town 140km south of Hurghada — an Ottoman fort, a working harbour, and the closest thing this coast has to history you can walk through.
El Quseir has been a port for a very long time. Pharaonic expeditions to Punt are thought to have sailed from near here, it was a principal embarkation point for pilgrims crossing to Mecca for centuries, and the Ottoman fort still standing in the centre was built in the 16th century and later fought over by the French and the British.
None of that has been turned into a theme. The old town is small, low, coral-block and quiet, the harbour still works, and the fort is a modest museum you can see properly in an hour. It is the only place on this coast where the buildings are older than the tourism.
The tourism that does exist is low-key and mostly strung along the coast outside town: a handful of hotels, several of them diving-focused, on some of the best shore-accessible reef in Egypt.
It is a long way from an airport, and there is very little to do that is not in the sea. Two hours from Hurghada each way is a serious bite out of a one-week trip, and if the diving is not the point of your holiday, El Quseir will feel like a very quiet place to have travelled a long way for.
Last reviewed 25 July 2026. Transfer times and what is open change. Something out of date? Tell us.
The rest of what this site has anchored to this town — the wrecks and spots in its bay, the trips that run from it, and how it compares to its neighbours. (The dive sites are listed above.)
The coast’s most underrated shore snorkelling — reef close in, water clearer than the north, and almost nobody in it.
The Egyptian daily says it went out to survey maintenance on the Qift–El Quseir desert road after an official denial that the route had deteriorated. Residents told the paper that patching is not a permanent fix.
8 September 2026
A back-to-school exhibition selling supplies at up to 30 percent below retail has opened in El Quseir, Ahram Gate reports. Its location, hours and closing date were not given.
7 September 2026
Egypt's General Authority for Roads and Bridges has rejected reports about the state of the desert route linking Qena governorate to El Quseir, saying work to raise the road's efficiency is continuing on a fixed timetable.
5 September 2026
Authorities cleared unlicensed building on state land inside the town's industrial zone, part of the 30th wave of the national removal campaign.
4 September 2026
A free medical convoy has concluded in El Quseir after seeing 237 cases, according to Ahram Gate, which did not say which specialties the convoy covered or who organised it.
19 August 2026
The Red Sea Governor chaired a meeting of the governorate's Regional Tourism Promotion Authority and directed officials to draft an international marketing plan alongside heritage development work in El Quseir, local outlets report.
17 August 2026
Rome shipped for India from this bay, pilgrims sailed for Mecca, and the Suez Canal left it behind. El Quseir is the coast's only genuinely old town.
22 April 2025