Out in the desert sands near the Egyptian city of Alexandria, there is said to lie the tomb in which the remains of Queen Cleopatra VII and her Roman paramour Mark Antony were buried. Archaeologists have yet to uncover this tomb, assuming it has survived the ravages of time at all. But I would like to think it looked something like this.

When designing the architecture for this tomb, I wanted to combine Greco-Roman and Egyptian styles to reflect the cultural background of the persons buried within it. As you can see, the portico at the front of the building is Romanesque, but the “pylon” (tall sloping façade) behind it and the big pyramid at the back are clearly callbacks to Egyptian traditions which were already ancient by Antony and Cleopatra’s time.