El Gouna

A purpose-built resort town twenty-five kilometres north of Hurghada, laid out across a series of islands and lagoons connected by bridges. It is unlike anywhere else on this coast — low-rise, coordinated in colour and materials, with waterways instead of main roads and boats used as taxis.

What is here

• Abu Tig Marina — the yacht harbour, with the main concentration of restaurants and bars
• Downtown, a pedestrian square built in a Nubian-influenced style
• Several kilometres of beaches, mostly attached to hotels but some open
• Kitesurfing at Mangroovy Beach, golf, diving and a small aquarium

Who it suits

El Gouna is very easy — clean, safe, walkable, largely free of the hassle some visitors find tiring elsewhere, and with a wide choice of food. It is also, by design, a bubble: you will see very little of everyday Egypt without leaving it. Both of those are worth knowing before you book.

The town was begun in 1989 by the Egyptian industrialist Samih Sawiris, on an empty stretch of coast with a shallow lagoon system behind it. Rather than build a single hotel, the plan was to dredge channels, create islands and construct an entire town — hotels, housing, a school, a hospital, a marina and, eventually, a university.

It is one of the few large private town-building projects anywhere in the region to have actually been completed and populated, and it now has a permanent resident population as well as hotel guests.

An architectural experiment

The developers imposed a single design code across the whole town: low buildings, domes and vaults, earth tones, hand-finished plaster and a limited palette. The reference points are Nubian and Mediterranean vernacular rather than international resort architecture.

The result is unusually coherent, and it has been widely imitated along the Red Sea coast. It has also been criticised as a stage set — a sanitised version of Egyptian building for people who do not want the real thing. Both readings are fair.

The environmental side

El Gouna has pursued sustainability harder than most Egyptian resorts: it treats and reuses its wastewater for irrigation, runs recycling and composting programmes, and has been recognised by UN Environment for the effort.

The counter-argument is that the lagoons were dredged out of a natural coastal system in the first place, and that a golf course in the desert is a demanding thing to justify however efficiently it is watered.