Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 75

The centre of Alexandria had been built on Alexander’s orders. It was laid out with broad boulevards in a criss-crossed grid-iron plan, the principal direction being parallel to the Pharos Island and the sea. We walked south away from the harbour along Sema Street, a wide colonnaded road leading into the middle of the city. It was already busy with shopkeepers bringing their produce out onto the shaded verandas and we had to sidle around the piles of goods – metal containers, carpets, coats, fruit and vegetables, personal ornaments and all manner of household items which were displayed on the pavements. Every kind of cart and conveyance was moving on the road between the colonnades and we had to be careful not to step down from the walking area into the open in case we collided with the moving traffic. The noise and the commotion set up a counterpoint to the cries of the shop-owners drawing attention to their merchandise as we edged our way distractedly through the crowds.

After we’d crossed over a few streets inland from the port we reached the city’s main street, Canopic Street, which stretched east to west as far as the eye could see. It was huge, an impressively broad thoroughfare which ran the whole breadth of the city. If Sema Street had been busy, Canopic Street was frenzied, with its large and imposing colonnades running away on either side of the street crammed with shops, offices, street cafes and small workshops. The cacophony from the metal

DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS