Al Zubarah Archaeological Site

Sand swallowed Al Zubarah and thereby saved it. Founded by merchants from Kuwait, the walled Gulf town boomed on pearls and Indian Ocean trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was destroyed in 1811 and finally abandoned in the early 1900s — its palaces, mosques, courtyard houses and double walls sealed under wind-blown desert. Qatar's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2013, is an unrivalled window on the pearling world that shaped the Gulf.