Port Said Military Museum

The Military Museum near the waterfront covers two defining moments in Port Said's history: the 1956 Suez Crisis and the October War of 1973. Both saw intense fighting in and around the city, and both left Port Said with a strong sense of its own military significance. The exhibits include weapons, maps, dioramas, and photographs from both conflicts.

The museum is modestly sized but genuinely informative about events that are not well-covered in most Western accounts. The 1956 section in particular tells the story of the city's resistance to the Anglo-French invasion from an Egyptian perspective. Captions are in Arabic and French rather than English, but the displays are sufficiently visual to follow without language skills.

things to do museum
A story
Port Said is unique among Egyptian cities in that it successfully resisted British and French forces during the 1956 Suez Crisis. When the Anglo-French paratroops landed in November 1956, the city's defenders — regular army, police, and armed civilians — held them long enough for international political pressure (primarily from the United States and the Soviet Union) to force a ceasefire. Port Said celebrates November 23rd as a local holiday marking the end of the battle, and the museum treats this event as the city's defining moment.