Port Said (/saɪd/, Egyptian Arabic: بورسعيد, romanized: Bōrsaʿīd, pronounced [boɾsæˈʕiːd, poɾ-]) is a port city that lies in the northeast Egypt extending about 30 km (19 mi) along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, straddling the west bank of the northern mouth of the Suez Canal.

The cities are connected by free ferries running all through the day, and together they form a metropolitan area with over a million residents that extends both on the African and the Asian sides of the Suez Canal.

Port Said acted as a global city since its establishment and flourished particularly during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century when it was inhabited by various nationalities and religions.

Referring to this fact, Rudyard Kipling once said, "If you truly wish to find someone you have known and who travels, there are two points on the globe you have but to sit and wait, sooner or later your man will come there: the docks of London and Port Said".

[6] Port Said is an important city in Egypt for trade and business, due to its location on the coastal region.

It was chosen by an international committee composed of the UK, France, the Russian Empire, Austria, Spain and Piedmont.

Port Said was founded by Sa'id of Egypt on Easter Monday, April 25, 1859, when Ferdinand de Lesseps gave the first symbolic swing of the pickaxe to signal the beginning of construction.

This rock could be considered the heart of the developing city, and it was on this highly symbolic site, forty years later, that a monument to de Lesseps was erected.

Everything Port Said needed had to be imported: wood, stone, supplies, machinery, equipment, housing, food and even water.

A year later, the number of inhabitants had risen to 2000 — with the European contingent housed in wooden bungalows imported from northern Europe.

[9] Due to the strategic location of Port Said intersecting Europe, Africa and Asia, thousands of men were sent to this hospital.

Following the end of the World War I, the directors of the Suez Canal Company decided to create a new city on the Asian bank, building 300 houses for its labourers and functionaries.

[10] Port Said by now was a thriving, bustling international port with a multi-national population: Jewish merchants, Egyptian shopkeepers, Greek photographers, Italian architects, Swiss hoteliers, Maltese administrators, Scottish engineers, French bankers and diplomats from all around the world.

Intermarriage between French, Italian and Maltese was particularly common, resulting in a local Latin and Catholic community like those of Alexandria and Cairo.

Italian was also widely spoken and was the mother tongue of part of the Maltese community, since the ancestors of the latter had come to Egypt before the Anglicization of Malta in the 1920s.

Multilingualism was a characteristic of the foreign population of Port Said, with most people continuing to speak community languages as well as the common French.

It stipulated the British pledge to withdraw all their troops from Egypt, except those necessary to protect the Suez Canal and its surroundings.

Following World War II, Egypt denounced the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, leading to skirmishes with British troops guarding the Suez Canal in 1951.

Port Said is also an important harbour for exports of Egyptian products like cotton and rice, and additionally a fueling station for ships that pass through the Suez Canal.

Due to its excellent geographic location, Port Said is designed to attract logistics start ups along with import and export businesses.

[16] In 2019, the city witnessed the construction of the New Suez Canal, led by the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

The government provides a number of incentives to investors in the scheme including zero tax and duties on tools, machines and raw materials related to the production of goods for export.

[18] Port Said, Kosseir, Ras El Bar, Baltim, Damietta and Alexandria have the least temperature variation in Egypt, additionally, Mersa Matruh and Port Said have the coolest summer days of any other cities or resorts, although not significantly cooler than other northern coastal places.

In addition, the Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Maritime Transport is a semi-private educational institution that offers courses for high school, undergraduate level students, postgraduate.

The Suez Canal Dwelling Area is situated between latitudes 31° 21' N and 31° 25' N and longitudes 32° 16.2°' E and 32° 20.6' E. where vessels awaiting to accede Port Said port stay whether to join the North convoy to transit the Suez Canal to carry out stevedoring operations or to be supplied with provisions and bunkers.

The Port Said Library at the time of its inauguration reached about 14,000 books and was supplied by encyclopedias and modern references.

Also, Tennis island situated in lake Manzaleh is a destination that attracts tourists to enjoy visiting this ancient Islamic city which was demolished during the crusades.

[35] Nearby to El Gameel area, there will be a real estate mixed use project named Downtown Portsaid.