Templo de Debod

The Templo de Debod became one of the unexpected highlights of my days in Madrid. After finishing my Alcatel training sessions, I would walk up to the terrace beside Parque del Oeste, just northwest of Plaza de España, where the air opened out and the city unfolded beneath the soft evening light. It was the perfect place to watch the sunset. Madrid turns strangely serene at that hour, the stones glowing as if warming themselves for the night. The temple itself still feels improbable: a genuine ancient Egyptian sanctuary from the 2nd century BCE, once standing near Aswan, dedicated to Amun and Isis. It was not seized or spirited away in some colonial episode; Egypt gifted it to Spain in 1968 in thanks for Spain’s help in safeguarding Nubian monuments threatened by the Aswan High Dam. The structure was dismantled, shipped block by block, and resurrected here on this high ground. Standing there in the fading light, it always felt like a fragment of another world that had found a strangely graceful second home in Madrid.

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