Philoxenite (modern Ḥawwārīya, near Alexandria, Egypt) was a Late Antique port city on the southern shore of Lake Mareotis in Egypt. Its creation is sometimes described as the ‘swan song of ancient urban planning’ since it is one of the last new urban centres built in Byzantine Egypt before the Islamic invasion. The foundation of the city is described in several accounts referring to the cult of St. Menas – notably The Encomium on St. Menas, generally attributed to John IV, the patriarch of Alexandria, and The Wonders and Miracles of St. Menas, written by an anonymous author probably around the late 6th century. Both texts confirm that Philoxenite was founded as a pilgrimage station serving pilgrims on the route connecting Alexandria, around 45 km to the northeast, with the renowned sanctuary of St. Menas (Abu-Mina) located around 20 km to the southwest.

The importance of Abu-Mina, currently a UNESCO site, as one of the great Christian pilgrimage center of the Late Antique world is indicated by both historical accounts (including references in Nubian sources) and material culture. Namely, the multitude of pilgrim flasks, ampullae of St Menas. Made in Abu-Mina between the 5th and 7th centuries, they were purchased and distributed by pilgrims, reaching far corners of the Christian world and are found today across the Levant, Asia Minor, and Italy, with individual ampullae reaching as far as north as Anglo-Saxon Britain (for example, Durham). Naturally, many were also found in Philoxenite. Pilgrims traveling to Abu-Mina would usually first reach Alexandria, then sail across the Mareotis Lake to Philoxenite and from there, walk or ride directly to the sanctuary of St. Menas.

The port city of Philoxenite offers a unique insight into the urban landscape of a new, late Antique urban foundation. The two central districts of the town were built around the 6th century using a preplanned, modular construction method. The layout of the town and plans of individual secular buildings were designed elsewhere with each urban ‘module’ mass-produced externally, brought to the site, and simply assembled during urban construction. This form of construction, popular during the heyday of the Roman empire, indicates external, possibly imperial funding. 

Visible from afar, Philoxenite’s port boasts three stone-built piers, the longest measuring over 120 m, that extend deep into the lake and could serve several ships simultaneously. At least one of these piers had a circular lantern, a type of lighthouse, at its northern end, indicating that sailors sought to reach the city even after sundown. The most magnificent building on the site, the great transept basilica, is located close to the harbour and must have once dominated the city’s skyline. Decorated with marbles and murals, it is one of the largest known churches of Byzantine Egypt (it measured 49 x 47 m). Other notable structures include at least three more suburban churches with baptisteries (one church was possibly a cemetery chapel) as well as an unusual set of three public latrines, most likely designed to serve the multitude of pilgrims passing through the city, and two public bath complexes. The main bath compound of Philoxenite matched the great basilica in terms of splendour and monumentality. Also located by the harbour, the monumental baths of Philoxenite were larger even than the baths of Abu-Mina (1200 m² vs 1000 m²) and were decorated with marble and mural paintings. The latter included both internal and external decoration as well as rare religious themes adorning the interior of the hot rooms (caldaria) of the bathhouse.

Philoxenite layout also deserves attention as it combined elements of both eastern and western urban planning traditions. On the one hand, it featured a broad street with porticos that resembled the great colonnaded streets of the Roman East, such as the ones in Palmyra, Nablus, Jerusalem, or Alexandria. Conversely, it also boasted a large, central agora, a massive, rectangular market space that resembled the central fora in the western Roman world, particularly Italy.

As the fortunes of Philoxenite were closely linked with those of the pilgrimage center of Abu-Mina. The town decayed after the Islamic conquest, when the number of pilgrims travelling to the sanctuary of St Menas dwindled. Archaeology indicates that Philoxenite was abandoned sometime in the 8th century, around a century after the Islamic conquest, and was never reoccupied. For the last 20 years, the site is excavated by a team of Polish archaeologists from the university of Warsaw, apart from studying impressive monuments of architecture, their research also focus on irrigation system, Byzantine footpaths, management of water (waterwheels) and diet of Philoxenite’s inhabitants, identifying for example rare evidence of consumption of rice as well as some Byzantine period crocodile bones.