Saudi Arabia

Riyadh — a city of 7 million built almost entirely in the last 50 years — with the National Museum of Saudi Arabia (the finest overview of Arabian history from pre-Islamic civilisation through the Nabataean period to the founding of the Saudi state, twelve halls spanning 4.5 billion years), the Kingdom Centre Tower (302m, the most distinctive skyline in Saudi Arabia, with a sky bridge at 200m) and the Masmak Fortress (1865, the mud-brick fort that was captured by Abdul Aziz ibn Saud in 1902, founding the modern Saudi state).

💡 The capture of the Masmak Fortress on 15 January 1902 by Abdul Aziz ibn Saud (with 40 warriors, having crossed 600km of desert from Kuwait) is the founding event of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud killed the governor in the gatehouse and established his authority over Riyadh in a single night. The notch in the gate from the spear thrown in the assault is still visible and preserved.

75km from Riyadh. Jebel Fihrayn (the Edge of the World — a 300m escarpment at the edge of the Tuwaiq plateau, dropping vertically to the desert plain below with an unobstructed view to a horizon 80km away, the most dramatic natural landscape near Riyadh) — technically part of the same geological formation as the Grand Canyon, formed by the same Cretaceous sea retreat.

💡 The Tuwaiq Escarpment runs for 800km across central Saudi Arabia — a cliff edge formed when the Cretaceous Sea (which covered the Arabian Peninsula 100 million years ago) retreated and exposed the limestone plateau. The Edge of the World is the most accessible section; the full escarpment contains fossil sea creatures in its cliff face at 600m altitude.

1h30 flight from Riyadh. AlUla — a governorate in northwest Saudi Arabia with Hegra (Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, 2008 — the southernmost Nabataean city, with 111 monumental rock-cut tombs comparable to Petra’s but in a more dramatic and solitary setting, far less visited), the old walled town of AlUla, and the extraordinary rock formations of the Sharaan Nature Reserve.

💡 Hegra (Mada’in Saleh, also called Hegra after its ancient name) was the second city of the Nabataean Kingdom after Petra. The tombs, cut directly into sandstone mountains by Nabataean craftsmen in the 1st century BCE to 1st century CE, are as large and elaborately carved as Petra’s — yet see a fraction of the visitors. For decades the site was off-limits to non-Muslims; it opened to tourists in 2019.

A full day at Hegra — the Jabal Ithlib (the ritual enclosure of the Nabataeans, with carved diwan rooms and inscriptions), the Jabal Unayza (a cluster of 27 tombs in a single sandstone outcrop, the finest in the necropolis), and the Siq of Hegra (a natural sandstone canyon corridor used as a processional route). AlUla’s night sky (one of the darkest in the world — 0.05% light pollution) for stargazing.

💡 The Nabataeans were an Arab people who controlled the incense trade routes from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean from approximately 400 BCE to 100 CE. Their kingdom — from Hegra in the south to Petra in the north, Bostra in Syria — was the most commercially successful in ancient Arabia, growing rich on the taxing of frankincense, myrrh, spices and silk passing through their territory.

Diriyah — 20km from Riyadh, the birthplace of the Saudi state (the mud-brick At-Turaif district, UNESCO World Heritage Site, where Muhammad ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab formed their historic 1744 alliance that would eventually become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) now extensively restored and opened as a heritage destination with the Diriyah Gate cultural zone.

💡 The 1744 alliance between Muhammad ibn Saud (the tribal leader of Diriyah) and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (the Islamic scholar and reformer) is the foundational moment of modern Saudi Arabia — it combined political authority with religious legitimacy in a form that has characterised the Saudi state ever since. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teaching became the theological basis of Wahhabism.

1h flight from Riyadh. Jeddah — Saudi Arabia’s most cosmopolitan city, the gateway to the holy cities, with Al-Balad (the UNESCO-listed historic district — a labyrinth of coral-built houses with elaborately carved wooden roshan (projecting lattice window bays) in the traditional Hejazi architectural style, the finest surviving example in Arabia) and the King Fahd Fountain (the world’s tallest fountain, 312m, visible 60km away).

💡 Al-Balad’s roshan (projecting wooden lattice bay windows — constructed from teak imported from India and carved with geometric and floral patterns) served as air conditioning, light filter and privacy screen simultaneously in a hot, dusty city. The oldest surviving buildings date from the 17th century; the wood-frame construction on coral-block walls is unique to Hejazi architecture.

The Jeddah Corniche (30km of waterfront promenade along the Red Sea, with the Floating Mosque — Al-Rahma, built on pillars in the sea, accessible only at low tide by a walkway) and a diving trip to the Jeddah reefs (the Red Sea has the highest coral diversity in any enclosed sea — the reefs off Jeddah include several of the finest accessible walls in the northern Red Sea). Fly from Jeddah (JED) or Riyadh (RUH).

💡 The Red Sea has the highest sea surface temperature and salinity of any major ocean body, and coral reefs that have adapted to these extremes over millennia. The corals of the Red Sea are more heat-tolerant than any others on earth — a consequence of millions of years of adaptation to one of the world’s most extreme coral environments.