The village of New Qurna lies between the Luxor bridge and the temples at the edge of the desert.
Although you would never know it looking at the village today, New Qurna is a drawing-board settlement built in the 1940s according to plans by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, when it was suspected that there were tombs underneath the houses of Old Qurna. Even the traditional clay brick construction of the houses did not change the fact that the residents of Qurna did not want to relocate at first. Alabaster workshops and stores have been established in many of the brightly-painted houses.
