Best After Dark Places in Abu Dhabi

Al Maryah Island Waterfront Promenade

A financial district with a waterside walk around its edge — planned to ring the whole island at 5.4 kilometres.

Abu Dhabi

Al Qana Waterfront Promenade

2.4 kilometres of canal-side promenade with buildings cantilevered twenty metres into the air above it.

Abu Dhabi

Emirates Palace Domes & Archways

A kilometre of sand-coloured palace under 114 domes — built for a summit, opened as a hotel, lit like a jewel.

Abu Dhabi

Etihad Arena

A woven gold shell on the Yas Bay waterfront — shade by day, lantern by night, 18,000 seats inside.

Abu Dhabi

Flower Parent and Child by Takashi Murakami

Ten metres of gold leaf and grinning flowers on the waterfront — one of Murakami's largest works anywhere.

Abu Dhabi

Marsa Mina Murals

1,163 metres of painted wall along the old port — the longest continuous mural in the capital.

Abu Dhabi

Masdar City Central Park Camel Sculpture

A camel in twisted metal with an impossibly stretched middle, standing in a solar-powered park.

Abu Dhabi

Sheikh Zayed Bridge

Zaha Hadid's sine wave in steel — 842 metres of dune, lit in colour that flows across the spine.

Abu Dhabi

Sheikha Fatima Park

A ladies' park from another era rebuilt as an urban forest of reclaimed materials, skate ramps and an open-air amphitheatre.

Abu Dhabi

Souk Qaryat Al Beri Canals

Wooden abras threading man-made canals between an Arabian souk and a Venetian one, with the Grand Mosque across the water.

Abu Dhabi

The Emerging Man (The Giant)

An eight-metre head and two vast hands surfacing out of the Gulf, as though something enormous is climbing out.

Abu Dhabi

The Founder's Memorial — The Constellation

A portrait of Sheikh Zayed made of 1,327 floating solids that only resolves into a face from certain angles.

Abu Dhabi

The Humans by Fatspatrol

A hundred metres of black-and-white figures in profile — dreamers, visionaries and jokers on a nightclub wall.

Abu Dhabi

Yas Bay Waterfront Art Trail

Twelve works along one promenade — Murakami, KAWS, four astronaut cats and a row of painted electrical substations.

Abu Dhabi