Al-Ula

The sandstone cliffs of Al-Ula hold their colour until the last moment of daylight, shifting from gold to deep amber as the sun drops behind the Hejaz mountains. Carved into these cliffs are the tomb facades of Hegra — Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage site — silent and sharp-edged after two thousand years. The air smells of warm rock and dust, and after dark the mud-brick maze of Old Town fills with lamplight, coffee and the murmur of its market street.

Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia is an open-air museum spanning multiple civilisations. The Nabataean tombs at Hegra date to the first century CE, contemporaries of Petra but far less visited. Below them, the ruins of Dadan — capital of the Lihyanite kingdom — hold carved lion tombs and inscriptions in a script few can still read. Jabal Ikmah, the canyon 'open library', preserves some three hundred Dadanitic and Lihyanite inscriptions — the densest concentration found anywhere — and joined UNESCO's Memory of the World register in 2023. The modern town sits in a narrow valley between sandstone outcrops, with Elephant Rock — a natural formation resembling a pachyderm in profile — standing as a landmark in the desert beyond.