Where you are actually standing
The Pyramids Rooftop photoshoot happens on a private roof in the streets below the Giza plateau, looking across at it. It is not inside the archaeological complex, it is not on the sand beside the Great Pyramid, and there is no gate between you and your car.
Everything else about the brand's locations follows the same pattern. The Sand Dunes shoot is on open desert. Fayoum is the lakes and the white dunes, about three hours from central Cairo. None of the three is a shoot inside an antiquities site.
Why that is the better deal, not the consolation prize
A roof above the plateau gives you four things the plateau itself does not.
- The hour before the site opens. A private roof has no opening time, which is why these sessions can start in the best light of the day rather than after the first coaches.
- Nobody else in the frame. A wide shot on the plateau is a wide shot with other people's holidays in it. A roof is yours for the session.
- No ticket, no gate, no queue, and no walk in a five-metre train across open sand before you have taken a photograph.
- Somewhere to change, and somewhere to put the other eleven colours.
And what it is not
It is not a photograph taken from the base of the pyramids, and the geometry is honestly different: you are across from the plateau rather than under it, so the pyramids sit in the background at a distance rather than looming behind your shoulder.
If the photograph you have in your head is the one taken on the sand at the foot of the Great Pyramid, a rooftop will not produce it, and you should know that before you book rather than after. Say so when you enquire. Filming and photography inside an antiquities site is a separate permitted activity with its own cost and lead time, and it is a different conversation rather than an upgrade on this one.
A note on tickets, hours and permits
You will find a great many web pages stating the Giza general admission price, the complex's opening hours and the fee for using a tripod. We are deliberately not adding one more.
When this article was written, publicly available sources disagreed with each other by roughly a factor of three on the general admission ticket for foreign visitors, gave two different winter opening times, and quoted at least three different figures for a tripod. The sources are listed at the foot of this page so you can see the spread for yourself.
None of those numbers is ours to confirm. They are set by the Egyptian antiquities authority, they change, and a figure repeated confidently by a photography company is exactly the kind of detail that turns into an argument at a ticket window. If you are planning to visit the complex as well as shoot on a roof, which many people sensibly do on the same day, check the price and the hours with the official ticketing channel close to your date.
What we can tell you without qualification is the part that is ours: the rooftop session needs no complex ticket, because it does not enter the complex.
What to ask any provider, including us
The marketplace listings for this kind of shoot are, as a group, vague about location in a way that is hard to read as accidental. Four questions settle it.
- Is the shoot inside the archaeological site, or on a private roof or stage overlooking it? There is no third answer.
- Who owns the roof, and is access arranged for my specific date or standing?
- Does the price include a complex entry ticket? If the shoot is not inside the complex, it should not need one.
- If I also want photographs inside the site, what permit does that require and what does it cost?