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There have always been two faces to Cairo: the silent grandeur of its ancient history and the workaday freneticism of its 18 million residents. Luckily, most visitors manage to catch a glimpse of both. In fact, it’s this unique tangle of mysterious past and hyperkinetic present that makes this city a must-see-before-I-die essential.

After a bumpy flight in from Paris, I was itching to hit downtown Cairo’s afternoon streets, already animated by rush hour traffic and zigzagging pedestrians. Adjusting to the steamy air on the palm-lined avenues near my hotel, the Cairo Marriott, I made a pit stop at Khan el-Khalili market, a bustling souk in the city’s Islamic district. The labyrinthine bazaar, which dates back to 1382, is popular with visiting Westerners — and the ideal introduction to Cairo.

Lined with jewelry stalls, suspect designer goods and cheap souvenirs — anyone for a Sphinx ball cap? — this is an entertaining spot to spend a leisurely hour.  And when yawning hunger suddenly struck, it also provided some handy alfresco feasting opportunities. Ignoring the chatty T-shirt traders, I tucked into a plate of fiteer, a flaky pizza-like slice stuffed with salty cheese.

Rising early the next day, I cracked the hotel curtains to reveal a sun-drenched metropolis bisected by the soup-green Nile River.

The modern concrete towers and faded colonial frames were hemmed in by wispy smog, and the ghostly visage of a pyramid or two shimmered in the haze. Egypt’s main attractions were winking at me invitingly.

After a bumpy bus ride, I was soon striding across the gray sands of suburban Giza, on Cairo’s southern edge, craning my neck up at the Great Pyramid of Khufu. At 455 feet high it’s the country’s largest such structure.

Hooked and eager for more, I headed to the Valley of the Kings. Whereas Giza was overrun with hawkers, this sun-bleached hillside dust bowl was crowded with quiet, reverential tourists and the pharaonic resting places they’d come to see. For nearly 500 years, from the 16th to the 11th century B.C., this is where the kings and powerful nobles of Egypt’s New Kingdom constructed their tombs.

Inching into the Tomb of Merneptah, I found an elaborate blue-painted ceiling seeded with gold stars. Then I ducked into the Tomb of Tuthmosis, a cool chamber dominated by a hieroglyphics-covered sarcophagus discovered in 1903 by Howard Carter, who later poked his trowel into a far more celebrated find. The tomb of a minor king like Tutankhamen had been expected to contain broken pots and a fresco or two, but after six years of digging in Tut’s tomb, Carter uncovered a jaw-dropping cache of sparkling antiquities. Although the mummy of the boy king remains in situ, these artifacts were removed.

Barreling into Cairo’s Egyptian Museum the next day, I launched my own dig. The century-old institution is a menagerie of crumbling mummies (a slick new museum is on the way), but one gallery houses King Tut’s astonishing stash.

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