Al Fahidi

Riyadh · Saudi Arabia

The Coffee Ritual That Ran the Desert

A cup of coffee in the desert was a contract, a test, a truce, and a promise of protection — a whole social order in the tilt of a small white cup.

Among the Bedouin of Arabia, serving coffee was never just hospitality — it was a code. The order of the cups, the amount poured, the shake of the wrist that says enough: a whole unwritten language for turning a dangerous stranger into a guest, and sometimes an ally. The story of Arabic coffee as the social law of the desert — and how it lives on in the region's museums and art.

Coffee Began in Yemen

The coffee plant is Ethiopian. But the drink — roasted, brewed, and made the center of a culture — is Yemeni.

Before the espresso machine, before the café, a Sufi in Yemen brewed a bean to stay awake for God. This is the story of how coffee became coffee — from the prayer lodges of the Shadhili order to the Red Sea port of Mocha that named a drink, and finally to the shape the Gulf poured all of it into: the dallah on the one-dirham coin.

Dubai · United Arab Emirates

Why Gulf Cities Are So White

The dazzling white of Gulf cities looks like simple physics — sunlight, reflected. The real story runs through coral, lime, faith, oil and the way traditions acquire their reasons after the fact.

Everyone knows why Gulf cities are white: white reflects the sun. It isn't wrong — it's just one strand of a much thicker rope. Follow it back through coral walls and lime skins, a sustainability code that never mentions colour, and a desert that was never really dark and the tidy explanation starts to look like something we tell ourselves afterward.

Lisbon · Portugal

Lisbon's Gulbenkian Museum Revives Its 1960s Vision After Extensive Refurbishment

A €7.8m renovation restores the Portuguese institution to its mid-century modern roots, reuniting architecture, art and landscape

The Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon has reopened following an 18-month, €7.8m renovation that returns the building to its original 1969 Brutalist aesthetic, reuniting its diverse collections with the architecture that first housed them.

Dubai · United Arab Emirates

Art Installations in The Dubai Mall: A Complete Guide to Every Sculpture and Feature

From a four-storey waterfall of pearl divers to a real 155-million-year-old dinosaur — a guide to every permanent artwork inside the world's most visited building.

Every permanent sculpture, kinetic installation and immersive district in the mall — who made them, what they mean and how to see them all in two hours.

Dubai · United Arab Emirates

Museum of the Future Confirms Closing Date for Current Exhibitions, With New Experiences Due in Early 2027

Dubai's landmark institution will run its present galleries until mid-September before beginning work on a new generation of experiences, shaped by over 1,000 public submissions and timed to its fifth anniversary.

Dubai's Museum of the Future has confirmed that its current exhibitions will remain open to visitors until mid-September 2026, after which the institution will close for redevelopment ahead of a new generation of experiences due in the first quarter of 2027 — timed to mark its fifth anniversary.