Cultural Tourists Places in Abu Dhabi

ADGM Building (Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange)

A glass hall the size of a football pitch, lifted 27 metres into the air on four granite piers above a circular pool.

Abu Dhabi

ADNOC Headquarters

342 metres of granite-framed restraint on the Corniche — a monumental arch standing against the Gulf.

Abu Dhabi

Abrahamic Family House

A mosque, a church and a synagogue as three identical 30-metre cubes — equality argued in Omani limestone.

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi Central Bus Station

Mint-green concrete wings folded over a 1989 terminal — Gulf modernism still doing its day job.

Abu Dhabi

Al Ain Oasis & the Falaj Channels

147,000 date palms watered by channels dug three thousand years ago — and still running.

Abu Dhabi

Al Bahr Towers Responsive Façade

Twin cylinders wrapped in 2,000 folding umbrellas — a mashrabiya that opens and closes with the sun.

Abu Dhabi

Al Maqta Bridge

A pale blue steel truss from 1968 — the first permanent way onto the island, and still carrying traffic.

Abu Dhabi

Al Maqta Watchtower

A coral-stone tower on an islet in the channel — one of Abu Dhabi's oldest buildings, and you cannot reach it.

Abu Dhabi

Aldar Headquarters (The Coin Building)

A 121-metre glass disc standing on its edge — the Middle East's first circular skyscraper, and its most-photographed silhouette.

Abu Dhabi

Capital Gate (The Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi)

An 18-degree lean, four times Pisa's — a skyscraper built deliberately off-balance and held there by steel.

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

Hudayriyat Bridge

The UAE's first cable-stayed bridge — 1.3 kilometres out to an island that was closed to the public until it opened.

Abu Dhabi

Mamsha Al Khair

A granite monolith and limestone blocks along the Corniche, carrying a quotation every thirty metres.

Abu Dhabi

NYU Abu Dhabi Campus

Twenty-nine buildings, one shaded pedestrian street grid — a liberal-arts campus built as a small city on Saadiyat.

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

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

Special Olympics Gardens

Six permanent commissions in a garden outside Manarat Al Saadiyat — including a mirrored bridge you can walk across.

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 Liwa Desert

The northern edge of the Rub' al Khali — the largest continuous sand sea on Earth.

Abu Dhabi

The Wisdom Garden, Umm Al Emarat Park

Thirty of Sheikh Zayed's sayings cut into ten marble walls, in a garden of native planting and water.

Abu Dhabi

Tolerance by Eduardo Kobra

Two thousand square metres of kaleidoscopic portraiture wrapped around a building — the largest mural in the region.

Abu Dhabi

UAE Pavilion

A gold steel sand dune shipped from Shanghai in 60 containers and rebuilt, panel by numbered panel, on Saadiyat.

Abu Dhabi

Wahat Al Karama (Oasis of Dignity)

Thirty-one aluminium tablets leaning on one another — the UAE's first war memorial, facing the Grand Mosque.

Abu Dhabi