This roundtable held between 28 and 30 April 2004 included discussions in which leading experts on Alexandria discussed the phenomenon known as “Alexandrianism”. Those attending the roundtable attempted to define the term through an examination of the political, social, religious, geographical, historical, urban, linguistic and literary aspects of Alexandrian cosmopolitanism.

Over the course of three days, the following issues were addressed:
- The foreign communities and their relationship with each other, with home and with Egyptians
- Institutions such as welfare foundations, places of worship, schools, the Alexandrian Municipality and the Ornato
-The very notion of cosmopolitanism: how and when it originated, with whom and how it expanded to include others, how it affected questions of identity, did the ethnic groups integrate or remain separate, and was it specific to Alexandria only