Places

Deira Gold Souk & Spice Souk

Lattice-covered arcades where hundreds of shopfronts glitter with gold, and narrow lanes nearby spill over with saffron and frankincense.

Dubai

Dubai Metro Station Shells

Golden shell-roofed stations across the city — Aedas's pearl-inspired canopies, a column-free steel form repeated as urban jewellery.

Dubai

Dubai Street Museum

Old Satwa's 2nd of December Street reborn as an open-air gallery — heritage murals by artists from five continents.

Dubai

Dubai Walls

Sixteen global street artists — Blek le Rat, D*Face, ROA, Vhils and more — turned City Walk into an open-air gallery, including a six-storey mural.

Dubai

Dubai Water Canal Waterfall

A curtain of illuminated water pouring off the Sheikh Zayed Road bridge — that parts automatically to let boats glide through.

Dubai

DubaiDino

A real 155-million-year-old Diplodocus skeleton, 24 metres long, standing in the middle of the mall.

Dubai

Expo City Entry Portals

Asif Khan's 21-metre carbon-fibre gateways — a mashrabiya 'drawn in the sky', with vast doors thin and light enough to be opened by one person.

Dubai

Hatta Sign

Giant 19.28-metre letters on a Hajar Mountain ridge — the world's tallest landmark sign, taller than Hollywood's, reachable only on foot.

Dubai

IMAGINE, Dubai Festival City

A Guinness-record light, water and fire show on Festival Bay — lasers, fountains and 36 storeys of projection mapping on the InterContinental.

Dubai

Infinity Bridge

A 42-metre steel arch bent into the mathematical symbol for infinity, spanning Dubai Creek at its historic mouth.

Dubai

Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park

The UAE's first open-air sculpture park, wrapped around Jameel Arts Centre on the Creek — monumental works by international and Emirati artists.

Dubai

Jameel Arts Centre Desert Gardens

Seven courtyards by Anouk Vogel, each a different desert of the world — sculptural plants on pink terrazzo, some rescued and three centuries old.

Dubai

LOVE ME

Richard Hudson's five-metre mirror-polished heart, aligned so the Burj Khalifa lands on its surface.

Dubai

Love Lake, Al Qudra

Two interlocking heart-shaped lakes carved into the desert, with trees planted to spell LOVE — land art visible from space.

Dubai

ME Dubai Lobby

Zaha Hadid's only fully self-designed hotel interior — a fluid white-and-gold lobby set directly beneath the Opus void.

Dubai

Madinat Jumeirah Bronze Horses

A herd of life-size bronze Arabian horses by Danie de Jager, galloping across the lawns of the Madinat Jumeirah resort.

Dubai

Meydan Bridge

An undulating wave of a bridge that dissolves after dark into an unbroken ribbon of royal-blue neon across the desert.

Dubai

Mohammed Bin Rashid Library

A seven-storey building in the shape of a rehal — the wooden book rest for the Quran — opened like a book above Dubai Creek.

Dubai

Neon City Light Installation

A three-storey kinetic light show of the Chinese zodiac by Jason Bruges Studio, at the heart of Chinatown.

Dubai

Shepard Fairey Murals, d3

Two facing walls by the artist behind Obama's 'Hope' poster — his first murals in the Middle East, a peace dove and a fist holding a flower.

Dubai

Souk Al Bahar

An Arabesque 'sailor's market' of stone arches and lanterns on Burj Lake, linked to Dubai Mall by a bridge with the best fountain view.

Dubai

Souk Madinat Jumeirah

A recreated Arabian town of wind towers, lantern-lit lanes and abra-plied canals, framing the Burj Al Arab across the water.

Dubai

Surreal, Expo City

A four-storey ring of waterfalls by WET Design where water flows upward and a circle of hydrogen fire burns at the centre, scored by the Game of Thrones composer.

Dubai

Terra — The Sustainability Pavilion

Grimshaw's 130-metre solar canopy — a great steel tree that harvests its own energy and water, ringed by rotating 'Energy Trees'.

Dubai