Ras el-Barr

Ras el-Barr, whose Arabic name means Cape of the Land, is a resort city in the Damietta Governorate of Egypt, on the Mediterranean Sea at the mouth of the Damietta branch of the Nile. It has about 25,000 permanent residents, but during the summer holiday season from July to September the population expands to over 250,000. The city lies on a peninsula bordered on the east by the Damietta Nile branch, with the area called Lessan at its northern tip where the river meets the sea, giving the whole a triangular shape. Although it sits within the Nile Delta, its sandy soils come from coastal processes, with much of the city built on foreshore dunes and its older parts on the natural levee of the river. The climate is hot desert, tempered by the sea, and there has been gas and oil exploration.