Things to Do in Anaheim & Buena Park

Creating the Valley of the Kings was no simple undertaking: a small army of builders, engineers, engravers and other workers was required to carve the dozens of tombs out of sheer rock over the centuries.

Naturally they all had to be housed somewhere, ideally not too far away. But it was only with the discovery Valley of the Artisans (or Deir el-Medina), around the time of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb, that we learnt more about their living conditions.

The outlines of the “workmen’s village” are still clearly visible, and extant reliefs offer a fascinating portrait of everyday life. All of this makes the Valley of the Artisans a pleasant change after countless monuments glorifying the pharaohs and their morbid fixation on the afterlife.

A striking monument to those who lost their lives during the Spanish Civil War, the Valley of the Fallen, or Valle de Los Caidos, is a poignant dedication to the 40,000 victims whose remains lie buried beneath. The immense structure features a basilica and tomb complex set in a mountain valley north of El Escorial and is topped by an enormous 500-foot-tall stone memorial cross – allegedly the tallest monument of its kind in the world and visible for miles around.

The impressive site is an admirable achievement, but one not without controversy. In fact, many dispute the nature of a monument that only commemorates two names – the Nationalist dictator General Francisco Franco who commissioned the monument and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Fascist Falange – believing the monument to be a one-sided tribute to the victorious, rather than a sign of post-civil war reconciliation. Also under contention is the fact that the monument, erected in 1959, was built by forced labor under the dictatorship of General Franco, taking thousands of political prisoners over 18 years to complete and costing many their lives in the process. Despite the controversy though, the memorial remains one of the country’s most dramatic cenotaphs and walking through the underground crypt is a harrowing reminder of the bloody battle.

The harsh, lunar landscape of the Valley of the Kings is the resting place of numerous New Kingdom pharaohs, whose remains were interred in tombs burrowed into rock. The 60-odd tombs which have been discovered (which may represent only half of the total tombs in the area) are identified by number rather than the name of their original inhabitant, and a handful of tombs are closed at any one time for restoration. Nonetheless there is more than enough to see, and it is better to pick out a representative sample rather than try to see every tomb.

Grave-robbers and museums have nabbed the items which were supposed to accompany rulers into the afterlife, but you can still see the work of some of the finest artisans of the ancient world, who glorified pharaohs in frescoes and wall reliefs. Graffiti shows that this extraordinary ensemble of antiquities was already a tourist attraction for the ancient Greeks and Romans.